LD 5481 
.U718 
L4 
Copy 1 



DISCOURSES COMMEMORATIVE 

OP 

PROFESSOR TAYLER LEWIS, LLD.,LH.D., 

Delivered at Comniencenient, 1877 ; 

AND OF 

PROFESSOR ISAAC W! JACKSON, LL.D., 

Delivered at Coininencement, 1878. 

BY 

t 

ELIPHALET NOTT POTTER, D.D., LL.D., 

President of Union Universitj'. 

PUBLISHED BY REQUEST 
OF THE 

ALUMNI AND TRUSTEES. 



ALBANY, N. Y. : 
J. MUNSELL, PRINTER. 

1878. 



£NOK. 




s m 






. e"-> 



of 

professor Ea^Ux Eetoig, HIL.B,, a.?§.2i. 



.^ 



Tayler Lewis, LL.D., L.H.D., E'ott Professor of 
THE Oriental Languages and Lecturer on Bibli- 
cal AND Classical Literature, in Union College, 
departed this life on the eleventh day of May, 

1877. 



k 



I know that m}'^ Redeemer lives ; 
And o'er my dust, Survivor, shall he stand. 
My skin all gone, this [remnant] they may rend ; 
Yet from my flesh shall I Eloah see ; — 
Shall see Him mine ; — 

Mine eyes shall see Him — stranger now no more. 
Job xix, 25, 26, 27 ; 
in Doctor Lewis's Rhythmical Version. 

1^0 subject can form for us a more suggestive 
Baccalaureate theme than the life of the Alumnus 
whose career as pupil, professor and p .triot, as scholar, 
author and Christian gentleman, we are assembled 
to commemorate. And yet the biographical sketch of 
a great man is apt in its impression to be as unsatis- 
factory as are the attempted reproductions of the Alps 
in miniature. Tlie relative height of mountains and 
depth of valleys may be given exactly, and the places of 
glaciers and the course of streams may be traced accu- 
rately, but the grand impression of nature is wanting. 

If we portray him who is the subject of this me- 
morial discourse with fidelity, the portrait at best 
will lack the power and sympathy of life. 

"Oh for the touch of a vanished hand 
And the sound of a voice that is still !" 

Oh for his presence once more with us here now ! But 
alas ! that may not be. 



6 

Like Cromwell, who is said to have exclaimed to the 
too flattering artist, " Paint me as I am," Doctor Lewis 
were the last man to be fond of flattery, to have 
courted eulogy or permitted panegyric. And yet it 
is diflB.cult to speak of him in * ordinary language and 
as we speak of ordinary men ; for " one star differeth 
from another star in glory," even in that spiritual 
system of which Christ is the central life and light. 

In the year of our Lord 1802, the honored subject 
of this discourse was born in this State, at N^orthum- 
berland in Saratoga county. Those who have visited 
his birth-place and are familiar with the scenery of 
the upper Hudson as it flows through rich fields 
and fragrant meadows, with wooded hills near at 
hand and mountains in the distance; those who have 
traced along the river's bank the winding and ro- 
mantic walks, shaded by noble trees — the evergreen 
pine and cedar predominating — can understand his 
life-long love for his old home, his unwearied delight 
in the similar scenery of this beautiful Mohawk valley 
and his reverent appreciation of the being of Grod as 
revealed in nature. 

The time of his birth is somewhat memorable in 
our national annals. Peace and prosperity, to which 
the land had long been a stranger, had at last succeeded 
to the storms of the Revolution and to the partisan 
disturbances of early constitutional and political strife. 
The administration of Thomas Jeflferson which began 
the previous year, was to continue until the year 
1809. Aaron Burr was Vice-president. E"apoleon, 
already First Consul, had extended his hand and 
grasped the presidency of the Italian Republics, an 
earnest of his limitless ambition. By the peace of 
Luneville and Anaiens, critical and dangerous ques- 



tions for the United States as to impressment and 
neutral rights were temporarily put at rest. But it 
was only for a time. The renewal of war in Europe, 
the aggression of belligerents upon neutral commerce, 
the assumption of despotic power by [N'apoleon in the 
o^overnment of France, were reo:arded in the United 
States with bitter indignation by one party, the federal- 
ists, while the aggressive and haughty policy of Eng- 
land was as intensely irritating to the other party in 
our national politics. The opposing schemes for meet- 
ing these exigencies, were soon to rekindle anew the 
vehemence of partisan controversy and to prepare the 
public mind for the war of 1812. These events occur- 
ring during the first ten or eleven years of the life of 
Tayler Lewis had their effect upon his impressible and 
precocious nature. The home and neighborhood in 
which he lived was one where these exciting topics 
were sure to be discussed. His father, an officer in 
the Revolutionary war, had served his country with 
devotion and distinction. Monmouth, Germantown, 
Fort Stanwix, Yorktown, and the storming of the re- 
doubts of Cornwallis, were among the battles, sieges, 
patriotic fortunes he had passed. These memories, 
with the then fresh details, entered deeply into the 
young life of his son, were frequently alluded to with 
justifiable pride in after years and, we may well believe, 
were the foundation of that high, devoted and enthu- 
siastic patriotism which was among tlie distinguishino^ 
characteristics of Tayler Lewis. 

He was baptized in his infanc}^ ; his mother having 
made the long journey to Albany in several instances 
with a view to the baptism of her children ; and she 
gave her son the Christian name, "Tayler," for she 
was a niece of Lieutenant Governor John Tayler, of 



8 

Albany. Her son was wont to speak of her as a good 
Christian mother devoted to her liouseliold. 

The earliest testimonial to his youtliful scholarship 
is contained in a time-worn document found among 
his papers, dated, '^ iTorthumberland school, July 
19th, 1811," and written with the old-style precision 
of the day, as follows: 

" This may certify that Mr. Tayler Lewis is well 
versed in reading, writing, English Grammar and 
Geography ; and has obtained the rudiments of Arith- 
metic, commenced classical studies and made profi- 
ciencies beyond my most sanguine expectations. His 
good manners, disposition, and assiduity in study, 
highly recommend him to friends and acquaintance 
and to those who are friends of science." Like a 
quaint but life-like portrait, this shows that young 
Lewis already gave unconscious testimony to the 
truth of the poet's line, " The child is father to the 
man," and evinced the scholarly passion of his life 
in the assiduity which led his intelligent preceptor to say 
he commenced classical studies and made proficiencies 
beyond the most sanguine expectations. The pre- 
ceptor long remembered his bright little scholar, and 
quite recently his descendants have written from the 
West, giving evidence of the strong impression of 
ability so early made. He was afterwards at school 
in Milton, Saratoga county. A friend, then his 
schoolmate, after an interval of more than half a 
century, recalls with deep interest characteristics 
similar to those here referred to. 

His preparation for college was made at Salem, 
Washington county, under the direction of Dr. Proud- 
fit, a man of strong character, who, like his relative, Prof. 
Proudfit of Union College, was afiectionate and kind in 



9 

his intercourse with his pupils. Doctor Lewis traced 
some of his earliest and deepest religious impressions 
to this influence ; and was profitably and permanently 
affected, from waking in the night to find his faithful 
teacher and friend kneeling at his bedside and pouring- 
out petitions for his spiritual welfare. As he was but 
eighteen years old when he graduated from college in 
1820, and a mere boy when four years earlier he entered 
it, we cannot but be struck with the deep and lasting im- 
pression there made upon him. We trace his courage 
and patriotism to his father, the first elements of his 
religious life to his mother, and the impetus given to 
his intellectual life to his Alma Mater. Although, in 
his later career, he was to stand for the metaphysical 
rather than the ph^'Sical, for the ideal rather than the 
practical, while President Kott, then in his prime, 
was eminently practical in his aims and influence, 
yet the spell cast upon this pupil in college days 
never left him. As when a pupil, so when he became 
a professor and finally a biographer of President [NTott, 
he still honored, revered and loved him as in many 
respects the foremost man of his time, one whose 
memory was so dear to him that in the last days of 
his life he asked to be buried near Dr. E'ott in the 
College Cemetery. 

Among his classmates were Laurens P. Hickok, 
William H. Seward and others, destined to eminence, 
while some are respected citizens of this neighborhood. 
His room-mate, now an aged clergyman, has recently 
revisited the college, the room, the walks, the scenes, 
once enjoyed with this early friend whom in college 
days and ever since he has loved as a brother. This 
intimate acquaintance, commenced during early boy- 
hood when prosecuting the academical course of 



10 

studies, about the year 1814, was continued in college ; 
and his room-mate during his entire course informs 
us that he regularly read a portion of God's word and 
that, generally in the early morning ; nor was he 
backward in speaking to others of the thoughts that 
were thus suggested to him. His little pocket-Bible 
was always upon the table and numerous pencil com- 
ments were to be seen on its pages. Sometime in 
the year 1817, a weekly prayer meeting was organized 
in the section. Young Lewis was not only legular 
in his attendance, but took an active part in it. Slight 
and boyish in appearance, he was, as Dr. Hickok 
informs us, the best swimmer in his class and by no 
means neglectful of athletic exercises, although chiefly 
remarkable for his quiet, earnest and diligent attention 
to his duties. 

Judge Samuel A. Foot of Geneva, who graduated 
from Union College in the year 1811, states that Tay- 
ler Lewis entered his office at Albany as a student of 
law, soon after his graduation from this Institution, and 
continued in the office until three years later, when he 
was admitted to the bar. His classmate in college, 
William Kent, son of the distinguished jurist, James 
Kent, was for a time his fellow-student in the office. 
So purely intellectual was young Lewis, that, when 
tired of his law books, his recreation was found in cal- 
culating eclipses. He had one of the clearest and most 
active intellects and was regarded as certain of great 
distinction in the practice of law. Declining a pro- 
mising opening, he returned to Fort Miller and pre- 
pared to practice law in the immediate neighborhood 
of his birth-place. He connected himself with the 
Reformed Dutch church there, was one of its most 
efficient members and was elected a member of its con- 



11 

sistory. His brother, who studied in his office during 
this period, writes that " when the cholera, small-pox or 
other contagious diseases prevailed, the young lawyer, 
unaccompanied by any ministers, would visit the sick 
and the dying to pray with them and administer 
spiritual advice and consolation." He was also brave 
and generous in defending without pecuniary compen- 
sation the cause of the poor, the defenceless and the 
oppressed. 

But meanwhile he was perplexed by conscientious 
doubts as to his professional duties. The true direc- 
tion of his future career was given, in the seemingly 
accidental suggestion of a clergyman interested in the 
Hebrew Scriptures, that he should take up the study 
of Hebrew. This he did with avidity. In his pro- 
fessional journeys, his Hebrew Bible became his con- 
stant companion. I well remember his glowing 
description of his deepening interest and progress in 
this study and in the renewal and further prosecution 
of his college classics ; how the dawn would cree^^ up 
over the hills, and the rays of the rising sun flood the 
valley of the Hudson, rousing this eager student to 
the consciousness that all through the night and far 
into the morning he had been pursuing those classical 
an-' Scriptural studies which he was destined to follow 
through life over great obstacles and on to great emi- 
nence, and which in return were to be found the 
source of his delight and solace in the shadow of the 
valley at the close of life's pilgrimage. 

That pilgrimage was not made alone, for life-long 
friends walked onward with him. iTeither was he with- 
out those domestic surroundings which were essential 
to a nature so loving and social and sympathetic. He 
w^as married in 1833. You may see the old home- 



12 

stead of his wife's family, still in their possession, 
standing near Fort Miller on the borders of the 
Hudson. I know of no more touching tribute to 
domestic felicity than that scene toward the close of 
his life, when, calling his aged wife to his side with a 
fond embrace, he alluded to the lovely walks along the 
river banks in their youth, but exclaimed of the love 
of these last days of earthly life, " It is even better, far 
better, now." Later on, after a restless night, in the 
stilhiess of the early morning, to his wife and daughter 
who insisted on sitting up still longer with him, he 
exclaimed, "Ruskin has written a great deal about art 
and nature, but he has never yet written anything 
about an old man who lies sick and suffering, witb a 
dear old wife and devoted daughter tending him ; and 
until he has written that, he has never written all that 
he should.'' 

Soon after his marriage, influenced by his tastes and 
circumstances, he became principal of the Academy at 
Waterford. In the columns of the Waterford Atlas, 
when he was about thirty years of age, we find the 
earliest traces of his authorship. Discussing earnestly 
such themes as Skepticism, the Stage, Earthly Illu- 
sions, the Heavens, Religion, Intemperance, the Sin of 
Pride, the Relations of Church and State, the Dangers 
of the Republic, he wrote in a spirit which devoutly 
recognized the Bible as a logical power as well as a 
rule of action; so that he once said, "Reason com- 
mits suicide when it refuses the aid of the Bible. " His 
style, in his earlier articles, hardly foreshadows his 
later power, yet they are strikingly characteristic in 
their reverence for religion, their elevated speculations, 
their practical exhortations and in the choice of themes. 

He moved to Ogdensburgh, St. Lawrence county. 



13 

in the year 1835, accepting the principalship of the 
Academy there and writing frequently for the Ogdens- 
burgh Times during his residence of two years ; after 
which he returned for two years more to his old post 
at Wat erf or d. 

His public life dates from 1838, when, in accordance 
with the wish of President l!^ott (who had discerned 
the genius of his pupil), he delivered the Phi Beta 
Kappa oration at Union College. His subject was 
" Faith the Life of Science." In his treatment of the 
dijficult and then novel theme, he showed ''an acute- 
ness of analysis, a power of generalization, and an 
affluence of classical learning," which justified the 
wide circulation achieved by the address when pub- 
lished. Its repetition was called for at other institu- 
tions. His consequent reputation procured for him at 
once the offer of several collegiate professorships. He 
accepted that of Greek and Latin Literature in the 
University of the city of New York. It is interesting 
to note that the Union graduate in whose office, as we 
have seen, he had studied law, together with his fellow- 
student at the bar, who was also his classmate at 
Union, was instrumental in securing his appointment 
and acceptance of this important position for which 
he was so well qualified. 

The change to the Metropolis produced a marked 
effect upon the development of his character and 
scholarship. He could then measure himself with his 
peers ; in place of village periodicals, the great news- 
papers and magazines and publishing houses of the 
period surrounded him and were open to him. His 
pupils were older and more advanced than those he 
had previously taught, with the alertness stimulated 
by city life, and an appreciation and sympathy which 



14 

led, through evenings spent in scholarly intercourse, to 
life-long and helpful friendships. Society introduced 
him to converse with refined, congenial and highly cul- 
tivated minds ; the University, to scholars eminent 
and inspiring. The great political, moral and religious 
interests of the community, of which he always felt 
himself to be a responsible member, opened to him a 
still wider arena. He who might have been but a 
selfish scholar and recluse, entered upon it as the 
champion of whatever he believed to be right ; fur- 
nishing articles for reviews and newspapers, and de- 
livering forcible addresses at colleges and seminaries; 
proving that a new individual force had entered into 
the higher politics of the city, State and nation. 

In one of the metropolitan papers of the day he pub- 
lished a pungent criticism on certain public lectures 
which he regarded as open to the charge of dis- 
belief in the Mosaic account of the creation. The 

« 

lecturer was touched to the quick and deipanded the 
name of his critic. Professor Lewis promptly gave his 
name; but "when called upon, in my ofiice," said 
Judge Foot, "by a portentous relative of the lecturer, 
some six feet in height, who looked with surprise on 
the firm but frail little professor and proceeded with a 
demand for a recantation of some portions of the cri- 
ticism, those bright, sparkling eyes fairly beamed with 
fire as he answered, ' Recant ? 'No, not one word ! ' " 
The interview ended satisfactorily, hov\^ever, as he 
readily and fully disavowed all personal ill-will or in- 
tention to injure the feelings of the lecturer or to go 
beyond the subject-matter of the lecture. Naturally 
a controversialist, whether because of his martial an- 
cestry or no, he readily took the aggressive against 
whatever he believed to be erroneous, and was prompt 



15 

to rebuke it, alike among friends or foes. It is 
the comment of an intimate friend that he was looked 
to as one of the readiest defenders of the church 
against skepticism, even while he awoke alarm by his 
exposure of Scriptural misinterpretation and orthodox 
fallacies : that he rejoiced in the strongest, not to say 
the most defiant, assertion of his convictions ; that while 
his ready wit disconcerted opposition, his versatility 
was a match for opponents, and that these qualities 
making intellectual combat a source of pleasure to 
him, he himself realized that in controversy he did not 
always remain dispassionate. Writing of Farrar's Life 
of Christ, he says, " In some places Farrar seems too 
tolerant; but this may be only because he is a better 
Christian than lam in my harsher judgment." Still 
the controversialist, if he be earnest, cannot but give 
thrusts which wound, even as the soldier who battles 
must draw blood. Paul, in all ages recognized as one 
of the ablest of the champions of the truth, exclaims 
not only, " I have kept the faith," but also, " I have 
fought a good fight." 

Professor Lewis, let us here remark, was well armed 
for the battle of active, earnest life, because, though 
unconscious of what awaited him and pursuing know- 
ledge purely for its own sake, his leisure as well as 
his working hours were always well employed. His 
was an example harmonizing with the counsel which, 
when Chancellor of Union University, Governor 
John A. Dix gave to our graduating class as to the 
life-long prosecution of studies begun in college. 
Already the Iliad and Odyssey, the Greek drama, 
Plato, Aristotle ; the pastoral poets and lesser Hexa- 
meter poets ; Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, 
Plutarch, Longinus, Lucian, Cicero, Virgil, Horace, 



16 

Ovid, with other classic authors, and last, but not 
least, the Hebrew Bible, were re-read frequently and 
critically. And thus it has been truly said of him that 
he read ancient authors in the original, instead of 
reading about them ; the quotations and references 
for which he was so remarkable, being recollections 
or spontaneous suggestions of his own mind and not 
taken at second hand from note, index or lexicon. 

The degree of Doctor of Laws, received while he 
was at the University of 'New York, was conferred by 
Union College. Although fulfilling successfully his 
professional engagements, prosecuting his scholarly 
researches and giving attention to the duties of a 
citizen, he was also preparing to offer to the learned 
and religious world a contribution worthy to be the 
first-fruits of nearly twenty years of toil. 

In opposing the materialistic and skeptical tenden- 
cies of the times, it was natural that Doctor Lewis 
should turn to the great classic writer, who, centuries 
before the Christian era, combatted the same ten- 
dencies am.ong the cultured and progressive men of 
Athens. In 1844, in his forty-second year, he pub- 
lished the first of his works. It was entitled, " Plato 
against the Atheists," and was dedicated to Doctor 
I^ott as " President of the author's revered Alma 
Mater and in remembrance of the lessons of theoretical 
and practical wisdom," received from him. It received 
from scholars in this country and Europe a cordial 
welcome. It is only for the life-long student of Greek 
literature and philosophy to measure its value; but 
the thoughtful reader will admire its multitude of 
learned and apt citations from the poets and thinkers 
of Greece and Rome and from Hebrew writers, its 
subtle etymologies, its profound and sometimes beau- 



17 

tiful disquisitions in metaphysics, and will enjoy the 
simplicity and clearness of the style. Plato, it will 
be remembered, attacks, first, those who deny God's 
existence, then those who deny His providence and 
lastly those who deny His sin-avenging justice. His 
commentator selects the principal points of the argu- 
ment and the difficult passages and words, and gives 
more or less dissertation to each. He treats these topics 
with a just reverence for his master, wdth the insight of 
intellectual sympathy and w^ith a sense of fellowship 
with those who in all ages have stood for right, duty 
and Godliness. 

In 1849, Doctor Lewis accepted the professorship of 
Greek in Union College, and later, its chair of Oriental 
Languages and Biblical Literature. As in his former 
position, so here, he exerted an unusual influence, espe- 
cially upon the finer minds among his pupils. Li the 
class-room he aimed rather to interest and stimulate 
than to drill. To those to whom his department of in- 
struction was congenial, contact with him was like a 
revelation. The classics, the Scriptures, philology, 
history, current events, seemed filled with new mean- 
ing. His statement of facts and events as proving the 
presence and purpose of a Divine Providence ordering 
" all things for good,'' the inculcation of a purer aim, 
a higher patriotism, scholarship and Christian man- 
hood — who that knew him in his prime and has listened 
to these utterances in his class room, lecture-room, 
Bible-class, or in his matchless conversations, has not 
caught somew^hat of the inspiration of his earnestness 
and realized the originality and powder of his genius ? 
His eye brightened, his voice rose, as he gave with 
rhythmic beat the noble Homeric or dramatic passages. 
He advised his pupils to commit these not merely by 
2 



18 

rote, but " by heart," that their influence might be life- 
long. He called his students to what he had himself 
exemplified — the pursuit, for its own sake, of truth, 
knowledge and philosophy. 

Here too, as from early manhood, he continued his 
laborious studj of the Hebrew and G-reek languages, 
literature and philosophy. He became familiar with 
the Rabbinical writings. He could converse easily in 
Greek and sometimes conducted his reflections in it. 
His marginal notes in books were more frequently 
written in Hebrew, Greek or Latin than in English. 
He wrote original Hebrew or Greek verse readily. 
To these acquirements he now added Syriac, Samari- 
tan, Koptic, Chaldaic and Arabic ; the Koran being 
thoroughly studied, and the Thousand and One Mghts 
in the original furnishing him with light reading. 
He had some knowledge of the Gothic, and read the 
German and several modern languages. It is need- 
less to say that he was master of English. 

In 1855, the world of theological and scientific 
scholars was moved by the publication of a volume on 
the Creation as Revealed, maintaining that the Bib- 
lical day was not limited to twenty-four hours. His 
argument is mainly philological but is also meta- 
physical. The closeness of its logic, the breadth of 
its learning, the delightful surprises of etymology 
everywhere occurring, the relief it oflTered to many 
an earnest and doubting mind, the eloquence natu- 
rally inspired by the sublimity of the subject, well 
justified the attention which it received from friends 
and opponents. The attacks of the latter drew 
forth in the following year a defence of the author's 
position, entitled. The Bible and Science, or The 
World Problem. In 1860, he published The Divine 



19 

Human in the Scriptures; in the preface to which 
he promises a work for posthumous puhlication, 
on the Figurative Language of the Bible. Mean- 
while he had supplied the editorial and other columns 
of many leading magazines and newspapers with an 
immense amount of invaluable material, welcomed 
by an ever- widening circle of readers. 

The civil war of 1861 found him ready for his 
country's service. He helped forward to the field his 
son and son-in-law, who had taken commissions in the 
army. He was unwearied in patriotic appeals and argu- 
ments. He furnished a series of articles on the subject 
of State Sovereignty which excited great interest among 
the influential of all parties. He filled columns with 
disquisitions upon slavery and with similar discussions 
and appeals. Somewhat later appeared his Heroic 
Periods in a !N"ation's History. Unable to wield the 
swordjhe wielded untiringly a pen as sharp and power- 
ful. His " State Rights, a Photograph from the Puins 
of Ancient Greece " was, without his intervention, scat- 
tered far and wide and was felt to be influential in 
moulding the opinions of the cultured classes. '^ The 
Union professor," wrote Charles Astor Bristed, " has 
studied G-reek in a thoroughly practical and profita- 
ble manner. With the spirit of Greek philosophy 
as illustrated by Greek history, he is perhaps more 
thoroughly imbued than any man in the country; 
nay, we have little hesitation in saying that no Hel- 
lenist throughout Anglo-Saxondom has ever drawn an 
historical parallel so finished and telling as this Pho- 
tograph." 

Before the war Doctor Lewis had held, on Biblical 
grounds, that slavery was not in itself a forbidden in- 



20 

stitution. His characteristic conservatism kept him 
at first from the ranks of the abolitionists, hut it soon 
transferred him to the advocacy of freedom for the 
Southern slave. He demanded the restoration of the 
Union and the destruction of slavery; and President 
Lincoln's willingness to accept the first without the 
last aroused his utmost indignation. When asked 
what we should do with the negro, he answered, 
" What, sir, shall the negro do with you ? With dis- 
respect to nobody, the one question is as fair as the 
other." He loved the Union but was unwilling to 
accept it at the sacrifice of what to him was a matter 
of principle. In a letter to a friend after the war, he 
wrote, " My soul clings to the old issues not yet de- 
cided after all the blood that has been shed. It is 
solely a question of truth and righteousness." Horace 
Greeley said of him, that he had " placed Conservatism 
in its true light before the W(n4d and was one of those 
who would be more highly appreciated alter decease 
than while they yet lived. Able, acute, and industrious, 
devoting not only his hours but his energies, his heart 
with his life, to a vindication of the claims of the 
Christian faith to the acceptance and reverence of 
scholars and thinkers, he is one of the precious few 
wdio are aiding to rescue the word Conservatism from 
its popular perversion to the foulest ends, and to devote 
it once more to the characterization of steadfast 
loyalty to truth and righteousness." If a conservative. 
Doctor Lewis w^as also a firm believer in human pro- 
gress. " The world," he writes, " we may joyfully 
believe, is advancing and is destined to advance. To 
doubt it is to doubt the prophetic record. The world 
for which Christ died is not destined to ultimate 
barbarism or the final chaos of infidelity. The true 



21 

conservative stream of religious influence must rise 
with rencAved energy from every encounter, until, in 
the language of prophecy, it covers the earth with the 
knowledge of God." And this progress of mankind, 
he believed was also tending toward the realization of 
true catholicity in Christian unity. " In Christendom," 
he wrote, " separation, division, is never to be treated 
as a good jper se ; the church was one in the beginning, 
visibly and organically one, and such it will be in the 
end." 

In 1863, having suffered already for many years 
from extreme deafness, his nervous system became 
still farther impaired by the prolonged excitement of 
the war and the disasters which befell his sons in the 
field. The alarming wounds received by one and the 
sudden death in battle of the other, produced a shock 
which utterly destroyed his hearing and undermined 
his general health. But he never lost interest in the 
movements of society, writing for the papers on topics 
such as "Evolution," "Religion and Morality, etc." 
So late as 1872, he conducted vigorous discussions on 
the question of the Bible in the Public Schools. lu 
these debates, he maintained that the State had a dis- 
tinct religious responsibility, its very right to existence 
being not in popular consent — for he had little respect 
for majorities — but in the command of God. 

Doctor Lewis was an interested and honored member 
of the University Convocation of the state of 'New 
York ; and among the valuable papers which he read 
before it, one of the latest and most celebrated was 
entitled, " Classical Study; there should be more of it 
in our Colleges or it should be abandoned." ]^ot that 
he would abandon it. By better and more extended 
training in preparatory schools, he hoped that college 
courses might yet come to be more than avenues of 



99 



gram matical drill ; so that through the vestibul e of phi- 
lology the student might thence enter the temple of an- 
cient thought and classic philosophy. He spoke as one 
who, not without success, had striven to introduce his 
pupils to these higher realms of contemplation, and he 
received the thanks of scholars and the Convocation 
for this masterly and timely effort. From this body 
he received the honorary degree of L.H.D. 

His closing labors would alone have been worthy of 
a long life. He gave three years to his translation and 
annotation of Genesis for Lange's Commentaries. 
Then followed, for the same great work, his Rhythmi- 
cal Version of Ecclesiastes with notes, and then that of 
Job ; from' which I have selected his favorite passage, 
not so much as the text for this discourse as present- 
ing at its outset the substance of his faith in immor- 
tality. 

In 1875, appeared those lectures, delivered before 
the Theological School at I^ew Brunswick, N. J., and 
published by order of the General Reformed Synod, 
in which he treats of the Fearfulness of Atheism, the 
Denial of the Supernatural, the Cosmical Objections 
(astronomical and geological) to Scripture, and the 
Superiority of Bible Theism to the physical or philo- 
sophical views of Cosmos. In re-affirming in these 
lectures and elsewhere truths for which, like those 
ancient writers whom he most revered, he lived 
and would have willingly died, how many hearts 
has he gladdened with the vision of the truth which 
fills the cold void of materialism with the loving 
presence of the Divine all -fatherhood ! There are 
passages in his writings which, recalling the solemn 
utterances of Socrates and Plato, burn with an im- 
agination lurid and terrible as that of Jean Paul's 



23 

dreadful dream of Atheism, in which he portrays the 
wanderings of a despairing Christ through a Godless 
and crumbling universe. 

It was fitting that his last public appearance should 
be upon the Commencement stage of his Alma Mater; 
and there in 1876 he delivered that address ranking 
in some respects among the best of his utterances, in 
which he congratulated his life-long friend. Doctor 
Jackson, upon reaching in sound heart and health the 
semi-centennial anniversary of his connection with the 
Faculty of Union College. 

I^ot long before his death, Doctor Lewis said to me 
that he had made it a rule of his life to return to his 
Alma Mater at each Commencement — an example 
worthy of general imitation. For some years he drove 
dowmfrom Fort Miller, to Commencement. The wagon 
was the same, perhaps with the addition of a patch or 
two, in which in his college days he used to be brought 
here, not w^ithout some forebodings, at the opening of 
each term. His way towards the Commencement 
festivities, however, w^as bright with pleasant anticipa- 
tions. The prospect of re-unions with college friends 
and instructors as well as of the literary features of the 
occasion attracted him. On the morning after Com- 
mencement, he started homeward to drive through the 
same enchanting scenery, but ^' quam ynutatus T' The 
world looked dark and he was oppressed with a sense 
of sadness and dreariness as he saw the place he loved 
recedingbehindhim. And having loved Union College 
then, he loved it unto the end. When from other 
quarters, after he had become a member of its Faculty, 
tempting offers were made him, he could not be drawn 
away. One of his few regrets in parting with this 
world was evinced in the exclamation in the last weeks 



24 

of his earthly life, Oh, how can I leave Union College ! 
His love for it, for its summer landscape, its autumnal 
foliage, its garden, its sunsets, even for its old build- 
ings and its winter, was unfailing. He remembered 
the memorable year in his college days, when the 
snow fell in June and July ; and during his last winter, 
when confined to his room, he would ask, " Is the snow 
piled high, on the Campus ? " In the opening spring, 
though so long insensible to sound, his question was, 
'' Are the birds singing and the winds sounding among 
the trees in the College woods ? " 

He loved his friends and associates with peculiar 
constancy. The classic ideal of guest-friendship was 
not unlike his friendliness to his friends and friends' 
relatives. He condescended to men of low estate or 
rather his sympathies were with them as though they 
were his peers. Who ever did more literary labor for 
others without reward ? He had no pride of intellect. 
How patient he was, with people who insisted on his 
examining and correcting manuscripts destined to be 
rejected by the publishers, or if successful with pub- 
lishers and the public, owing their success to the un- 
recognized influence of his revisions and suggestions ! 
If irritated, he bore malice toward none. The slave 
and the outcast found in him a friend. He took little 
children into the embrace of his scholarship with those 
Scriptural lessons which are taught in so many Sunday- 
schools and by which "he being dead yet speaketh." 

His versatility and the range of his accomplishments 
were surprising. In the higher mathematics he worked 
out original problems with diligence and delight. 
His enthusiasm for astronomy, of which one of his 
earliest printed articles treats, led him often in the 
nights of his sickness to ask, " Is Orion shining to- 



25 

night ? Is he bright ? " His love for music was attested 
by occasional compositions and by his eloquent ad- 
vocacy of its early cultivation as conducive to order 
and beauty and to the believing spirit. After be bad 
lost all sense of bearing, he sometimes by fingering 
the notes upon the key-board, sought to revive the 
memories of music or to trace some new musical 
suggestion. 

His familiarity with the poets, especially with 
Shakespeare, was unusual. He sympathized with all 
phases of human life, so that (an omnivorous reader) 
the popular romance, or stories read in the original 
Arabic, or the scrap-book of olden times were alike a 
refreshment after intellectual labor. Keeping him- 
self informed as to the current events, he followed 
witb intelligent interest the progress of modern science. 
I have not time to quote within the limits of this dis- 
course the copious extracts I have made from his pub- 
lished works and from his early fugitive efforts, terse, 
pregnant and foreshadowing, as w^e have seen, the great 
productions of his life. I trust that a uniform edition 
of his works may be projected and published, including 
those left by his wise forethought ready for the press, 
and preserving also the scattered jewels whicb fell so 
freely from bis tongue and pen. 

I need not in this presence describe bis striking 
personal appearance, his noble brow, his dark pierc- 
ing eye, bis flowing locks, his facile hand, bis alert 
movement. 

But the mental habitudes of such a man, naturally 
an object of much interest to all students, young and 
old, are not to be passed over in silence. As one in- 
forms me, who knew him well, before the beginning 
of my owni student-life in college and our continued 



26 

intimate association in its Faculty, the Doctor was 
from tlie first an incessant worker. He never set apart 
a study-hour or one exclusively for recreation. I would 
that he had ! His walks were meditations, his only 
excursions were excursions in the fields of thought. 
He was never happier than in the cloister-like quiet 
of his study through the long summer vacations on 
the College hill. With doors locked and curtains half- 
closed, with back square against the arm of the settee 
and knees drawn up to hold an Arabic folio prayer- 
book of the ninth century, his contentment was 
supreme. He often went reluctantly to his meals (not 
unfrequently omitting them) and returned directly to 
his work. Sleep was another intrusion which he re- 
sented, always sitting up late into the night and yet 
rising at the hour usual with the family. Acute suffer- 
ing and actual loss of power convinced him, when too 
late, of his mistake in not recognizing and obeying the 
laws of health. IsTeglect of them injured the sense of 
hearing and indeed all the faculties, lessening both 
happiness and hopefulness. 

His reading included, as we have intimated, an im- 
mense number of books, ancient and recent, on every 
imaginable subject; but still he would re-read one 
book, even a favorite fiction (such as the Arabian 
Mghts,Romola, The Mill on the Floss), over and over 
again. He was very fond of history. He delighted in 
re-reading his Euclid in the Arabic of three centuries 
ago. He enjoyed broad humor as thoroughly as he 
did the subtlest wit; sometimes by anecdotes of 
blundering utterance, illustrating a nice distinction 
in psychology. 

Keeping pace with his thoughts, his pen was always 



27 

busy, as a vast quantity of marginal and loose mem- 
oranda, attest. For forty-five years, without a day's 
failure, he noted down the incidents of his personal 
and household life, a walk, payment of a bill, arrival 
of letters, visitors, topics of an interesting conversation 
and invariably the state of the w^eather; although 
never recording his sentiments or reflections. His 
grief over a beloved daughter's death sought relief in 
the touching form of a little book of consolatory 
verses from the Bible, each one beautifully written 
out in Hebrew, Greek and Latin. His hand-writing 
in all languages was clear and symmetrical. He was 
never content with the first form of his thought or ex- 
pression and seldom sent a first draught to the printer. 
He re-wrote the whole of Plato against the Atheists 
and of the Vedder Lectures, at least three times. He 
disliked and habitually put ofi* letter-writing because 
of this necessity which he felt for accurate and full 
expression even on ordinary subjects. His love of 
symmetry led him, in arranging his books on the shelves 
of his library, to regard not simply their subjects but 
their appearance and size. His books in fact were 
his only indulgence, nay, his necessary companions. 
His library was as essential to his enjoyment as to his 
literary life. Many years before the semi-centennial 
celebration to which we have referred, it was the privi- 
lege of his old friend, Doctor Jackson, as the eldest 
member of the Facult}^, to convey to him a pecuniary 
testimonial which far more than removed a distressing 
mortgage then resting upon this library. His surprise 
and gratitude were like those feelings with which upon 
his last birthday he received a floral tribute accom- 
panied with loving lines from his brethren of the 
Faculty. He valued the sentiment and the affection, 



28 

and his appreciation was as quick and natural and 
out-spoken as that of a ckild. 

He was especially grateful in the former instance, 
because of the fact that his "scientific friends," as he 
was wont thereafter to call them, representing a class 
he had attacked with no little vehemence in his contro- 
versial writings, were among the most active in the 
movement which rescued his library. Its shelves bear 
witness, like the strata of the rocks, to the order, se- 
quence and progress of systematic work — a library 
not large, but so choice and so characteristic, that his 
admirers and pupils would do well to secure it intact 
to be preserved permanently as his memorial in the 
College Library. For that library is to be placed, for a 
time at least, in the Alumni and Memorial Hall, the 
progress of which he watched with deep interest and 
for which he wrote the motto, both oriental and clas- 
sical, which stands inscribed in Hebrew characters 
upon its dome : 

Dies brevis, 
Opus multum, 
Merces magna, 
Magister domus urget. 

ixp Dvr\ 

The brief day drawing to its close found him still 
laboring for the Master, whose claims are vast but 
whose reward is infinite ; for, his Biblical Expositions 
for children, though the last of his works, were, it has 
been remarked, as important as any; and this because 
of the immense numbers and peculiar impressibility of 
the class addressed. They were distributed monthly 



29 

throughout the country. Through six months of con- 
finement to a bed from which he never arose, they 
were completed according to the original plan, despite 
the pangs of sciatica, sleeplessness, slow wasting, and 
physical weakness that refused to hold the pen. With 
eye bright, recollection prompt and true for nearly 
every needed verse of the Bible or passage of an 
author, with reason clear and penetrating, he still 
wrought in his seventy-fifth year the work of many 
men, and such work as few at their best accomplish. 
During these last days, while his intellect was clear 
and vigorous although his frail form was thus racked 
with pain, he had caused to be written out and placed 
where his eye could constantly rest upon it, that 
sentence from the book of the Wisdom of Solomon : 

For the corruptible body pressetli down the soul, and the earthly 
tabernacle weigheth down the mind that museih upon many things. 

On looking through the most prized volumes of his 
library, soon after his death, I saw written on a blank 
leaf in his Hebrew Bible, the following note : 

" This Hebrew Bible was purchased in 1829. For 
a number of years, it was read through twice a-year; 
then once a-year and since repeatedly. Almost every 
ditficult place has been made the subject of marginal 
or separate comment, every rare word noted and every 
rai'e meaning preserved in mnemonic marginal signs. 
It is much disfigured, but a much-studied and to me 
a very precious book." 

This precious book and its diligent study was the 
foundation of his posthumous monument, destined 
long to endure in Biblical articles and comments and 
translations of the holy Scriptures, and more espe- 
cially in his metrical version of the sublime book of 



30 

Job. The pages of the chapter in his Hebrew Bible, 
from which the text is taken, are crowded with 
marginal notes and references made years previous. 
He entered into the very spirit of the ancient collect : 
" Blessed Lord, who hast caused all holy Scriptures 
to be written for our learning ; Grant that we may in 
such wise hear them, read, mark, learn and inwardly 
digest them, that by patience, and comfort of thy hol}^ 
Word, we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed 
hope of everlasting life, which thou hast given us in 
our Saviour Jesus Christ." By the thoughtfulness of 
a tender heart and the last tribute of a loving hand, a 
Hebrew psalter was buried with him, because he had 
often expressed his sympathy with the classic custom 
of placing the warrior's arms and trophies in his tomb. 
Even in family prayers, he always read from the He- 
brew, Syriac, Greek or Latin text or from a version 
in a foreign tongue, rendering it fluently into admira- 
ble English. And that worn Hebrew Bible, filled with 
his notations, was the armory in which he was uncon- 
sciously gathering weapons for future conflict. It 
was the reservoir from which flowed streams makiup- 

o 

glad the people and church of God. Justly he con- 
sidered the rhythmical version and annotation of Job 
as " the crown of all his works." And the public 
at large recognized the services he was rendering. 
His reputation is not simply local nor only national, 
but extends to the world of scholars and to the 
numberless hearts of those who love the Scriptures. 
It was his sincere belief that the authority of the 
Bible rests not simply upon a theory of inspiration 
but rather upon the general acceptance of, and vene- 
ration for, the book as the "Word of God ; so that 
its supreme influence upon human life and conduct 



31 

must out-last all controversies about it, and all 
theories concerning it. His ideal of the Bible Christ- 
ian Avas so high that, like St. Paul, some of whose 
traits he possessed in a remarkable degree, he would 
say, " I am least of all and not meet to be called a 
disciple of Christ, but I believe His Word, I love 
those who love my Lord, and my hope is in the atoning 
merits of Jesus as therein disclosed." An author and 
a reader of many books, he placed above them all, at 
the summit of literature, the Book of books, and re- 
garded all knowledge but as steps leading up out of 
darkness to the revealed light and enduring truth of 
the Word of God. 

Our land, the world of scholars, and Christendom 
itself has suffered loss. The pulpit and the press 
proclaim it. But as with the going down of the sun 
which he loved to watch from the College Campus, 
there are glorious traces and influences left to us. 

For you, my beloved pupils who now go forth to 
your life-work, and for manhood and scholarship 
everywhere, what better lesson, what nobler incent- 
ive can there be than such a life ? God speed you, every 
one of you, at every step of your pilgrimage ! May your 
life and your last end be like his, whom in the bright- 
ness and beauty of the spring, pre-figuring the better 
life, and after the soul had craved and found release 
from the weary load of the body, we bore to his grave. 
From the solemn services conducted by those who 
had long known and loved him, and the eloquent 
words spoken b}' a pupil of other days, and from this 
sanctuary where he was wont to worship, you saw the 
long procession go, with solemn step and slow, bearing 
him to his burial, in the hope of a joyful resurrection. 
The gathering throng of students near his grave, 



32 

tlie Alumni, the members of the Faculty, his friends 
cind rehitives and mourning family, the noble aspect 
of nature, the towering pines standing like giant ward- 
ers, the hills round the College cemetery reechoing 
the voices of the College choir with those of the sor- 
rowing assemblage as they sang unitedly and touch- 
ingl}^ the favorite hymn, " I would not live alway," the 
last ministries of religion, the place of burial strewn 
by your own hands with flowers, tokens of love and 
symbols of the resurrection — may the scene long be 
impressed upon your memories ! From that open 
grave, may his voice seem to say to you, beloved 
pupil. Follow Christ, and " whatsoever thy hand 
flndeth to do, do it with thy might." 

The sun was drawing near its setting as in silence 
we left his burial-place. The night drew^ on and 
solitude reigned there ; but he, being forever with his 
Lord, was not alone ; nor was that silent grave the 
scene of hopeless loneliness. It was not alone, for 
from out the sky into which he had loved to gaze, stars 
looked down watchfully ; not alone, for voices of Nature 
wdiich he had loved and ceased to hear, whispered 
peace. It was not alone, for he had placed his trust in 
One who saith, " I will never leave thee nor forsake 
thee." He was not alone ; but for him, rest after toil ; 
after battle, victory; after separation, re-union and the 
fruition of his faith that it is better to depart hence and 
be with Christ. Said one who was near him at the last 
and participated in his latest and unintermitted labors, 
Without you, life will lose all its brightness. '' But," 
said he earnestly, '' I go where all is brightness, and 
you must meet me there." So may we meet him, 
beloved, and like him find fulfilled at the end of our 
pilgrimage the promise, " Be thou faithful unto death 
and I will give thee a crown of life." 



33 



God, the protector of all who trust in thee; 
without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy, in- 
crease and multiply upon us thy mercy, that thou 
being our ruler and guide, we may so pass through 
things temporal that we lose not finally the things 
eternal. G-rant this, heavenly Father, for Jesus 
Christ's sake our Lord. Amen. 



of 



Isaac W. Jackson, LL.D., JNott Professor of Mathe- 
matics IN Union College, departed this life on 

THE TWENTY-EIGHTH DAY OF JuLY, 1877. 



Lovely and pleasant in their lives, in their death they were not 
divided. 

I Samuel, 1, 23. 

A year ago we paid our tribute of respect to the 
memory of Professor Tayler Lewis, of whom we had 
but recently been bereaved ; assembling then for our 
Commencement exercises, in the church of which he 
was a member. Our vacation was soon clouded by the 
loss of his beloved coadjutor. By custom and the 
courtesy of this congregation, we find ourselves now 
gathered, on another Commencement occasion, in the 
church where for more than fifty years Professor Jack- 
son devoutly worshiped; andamid the sacred and colle- 
giate associations of this place, it has been decided to 
pay to the memory of Professor Jackson likewise the 
tribute of collegiate service and memorial. I esteem 
it no light responsibility to be called upon to fulfil 
this duty toward one whose entire life since his gradu- 
ation, for more than half a century, was devoted to 
this institution ; a life neither eventful nor conspicu- 
ous in the world's view, presenting no such scenes 
or facts as those in which orators and biogra- 
phers delight, yet a life most worthy of record and 
remembrance. For a great German writer well 
reminds us that we should honor most highly those 
who labor faithfully in class-rooms, since, although 



88 

they may fall from notice like the spring blossoms, 
yet like the spring blossoms they live and die that 
fruit may be borne. It is no light responsibility, then, 
to speak on such a theme and at the same time to 
reecho the solemn tones in which God is calling to 
us all from the graves of so many others connected 
with the College who have gone from earth within 
this collegiate year — intimate friends of Professors 
Lewis and Jackson, Trustees and former members of 
this Faculty. The invaluable services rendered to 
Alma Mater by many of them, and circumstances of 
peculiar interest in the career of others, call for a 
fuller memorial than can here be offered. 

Prominent among them, was the late Mr. James 
Brown, who, at the time of his death and for more 
than thirty years previous, was a Trustee of Union 
College. He attested his confidence in this institu- 
tion and his interest in its permanent welfare, by 
recent gifts and endowments amounting to one hun- 
dred and ten thousand dollars. He was a man of 
elevated Christian character and an exemplar of com- 
mercial honor and success. His charities were o:reat 
even compared with the great fortune he amassed. 
His word was, in all parts of the world, a guarantee 
of sound and unlimited credit. He placed his talents, 
experience and means at the service of this institu- 
tion, of w^hich he was an honored counsellor. 

Two others who have just entered into rest, the 
Hon. Professor Joel Benedict Nott and the Rev. Pro- 
fessor John Nott, had been members of this Faculty. 
The first was an officer of Union College from the 
year 1820 to 1831 ; a man of rare accomplishments of 
mind and manners, of whom his friend Professor 



39 

Joseph Henry remarked, " "We scientific men sufifered 
a great loss when he left us." Having served the 
College and the country with loyalty and ability, he de- 
voted his latest studies to the elucidation of the Holy 
Scriptures. His brother. Professor John I^ott, was 
an officer of the College from 1830 to 1854, deeply in- 
terested in the students and familiarly associating 
with them, modest, charitable, a simple-hearted clergy- 
man, an enthusiastic teacher and an unfailing friend. 
As contemporary with the latter in our Faculty, we 
may here refer to the lamented Professor J. Louis 
Tellkampf, J.U.D., who departed this life a few 
months before Professor Jackson and was his friend 
and correspondent. His accomplishments, learning 
and rare modesty and amiability are still recalled by 
the older members of our College circle. He left us to 
return to his native G-ermany ; and through late years 
he occupied with distinction a Law Professorship in 
the University of Breslau, a seat in the Imperial Par- 
liament and Council and a high position among 
German writers on Political Economy. He always 
cherished grateful recollections of Union College, 
welcomed to his home any one associated with it and 
entertained bright anticipations of its future. 

The Hon. John Y. L. Pruyn, LL.D., connected with 
us as an honorary Alumnus, an invaluable adviser 
in the preparation of the charter of Union University 
and also by addresses delivered here on many important 
occasions, is deeply missed from the Chancellorship 
of the University of 'New York, from the Board of 
Regents and from many other prominent positions of 
public usefulness. Among the wealthy and distin- 
gaished of our own country, the eminent in Church 
and State from foreign lands, and among the hundreds 
of our toiling teachei's who enjoyed frequent and 



40 

cordial invitations to his home, he will long be re- 
membered as conspicuous for a Christian grace, rarer 
now than of old, in that he was " given to hospitality." 

The Hon. William F. Allen, recently departed, was 
a class-mate of Professor Jackson, and from first to 
last it could be said of him with truth that he was 
" lovely and pleasant in his life." The Bench and the 
Bar, the Press, the College, the Church have done 
honor to his exalted station and reputation and to his 
Christian faith. We knew him here alike to honor 
and to love him. When, hesitating to accept the 
presidency of this College, I turned to its prominent 
friends for counsel. Judge Allen assured me most 
earnestly that he sympathized with one upon whom, 
as he felt, so many unusual difficulties, anxious cares 
and arduous responsibilities were to be thrown and 
that I could command his best and constant efforts. 
No father could have been a wiser or more affection- 
ate counsellor. Prudent in resolve, tenacious of 
purpose, efficient in execution, abhorriiig crooked ways 
and of unbending integrity, he was a rock of strength 
for our College. 

Of the younger Alumni also, there are several who, 
closely associated with Professor Jackson here, in 
the year of their death are not divided from him. 
Of those thus departed, in whom he was especially 
interested, were Edward C. Taintor, a member of 
the class of 1863, who won early in his course 
the l^ott prize scholarship and during his long official 
residence in China sent to our learned Societies valu- 
able contributions in Oriental Philology; Grenville 
Tremain who presented the resolutions at the Alumni 
celebration in Doctor Jackson's honor and whose 
brief but brilliant career has just terminated; and 
Betaz Brockelmann of the class of 1876. It seems but 



41 

yesterday that this youngest of the departed was with 
iiSj his warm heart full of hope and his active spirit 
seeking a field of enterprise in the West. His bright 
prospects, his love for his family, his friends and 
Alma Mater, all are now shrouded in the blackness 
of a mysterious and fearful tragedy ! My hand almost 
refuses to record the fact and my voice would fain be 
still; but the very memory of Doctor Jackson, an- 
swering the promptings of my own heart, assures me 
that he never would have passed in silence an event 
so full of admonition to us all. When the story of 
his assassination reached Germany, from her distant 
home in Heidelberg his mother wrote : " What 
shall I say in the agony of my soul ? Shall I ever 
be able to realize this cruel fact ? O Lord ! why didst 
thou not hinder the arm of the slayer ? How can I bear 
it, that he should end thus ? my good and noble son, the 
joy and pride of my heart, the crown of my children, 
my proud, beautiful boy so cruelly dealt w^ith. My in- 
ward eye sees the vast, endless solitude of those western 
plains and the lonely spot where lies my bleeding child, 
with his last cry to his Lord and to his mother. How 
can a mother's heart bear this and live and not die ? 
Mght and day, I cry unto the Lord for help not to 
doubt His love and to keep faith to the end. His 
last letter is written when he is worn out with weeks 
of travelling ; still he writes to me, his mother, his last 
sign of love. I could speak forever of my own dear, 
faithful son, but my heart aches so, and tears almost 
blindfold me. God bless you.'' With submission to 
an inscrutable Providence I here denounce the " deep 
damnation of his taking ofiV I echo the question of 
a near relative of his abroad. Can it be that while our 
western emigration is the nation's hope, our general 



42 

government does not prevent nor even pursue such 
outrages as this, especially where local authority is 
necessarily weak and intermittent and where private 
efforts at their best are utterly inadequate ? And 
shall our country be called, as once was Spain — a 
land where law protects not life ? 

Of others in the long annual list of deceased gradu- 
ates, time forbids me speak. Their memory will be 
duly honored on the Alumni day. We turn now to 
trace, so far as the limits of this discourse permit, the 
career of our lamented Professor Jackson. 

From the quaint memorial of Isaac Jackson and his 
wife, the first of the family who settled in this country, 
we learn that previously they were resident in Eng- 
land and were esteemed members of the Society of 
Friends; and that they were about sixty years old 
when they thought seriously of America as their future 
home. They were " under exercise and concern of 
mind" regarding the undertaking; since Isaac, in- 
spired perhaps by the Scriptural imagery of the new 
earth and new heaven with the fair river and 
tree and healing leaves of the Apocalypse, dreamed 
a dream of landing in the new world, of enter- 
ing a beautifuh vale through which, fed by a crystal 
spring, ran " a pleasant stream with hills of fair 
prospect on either hand." It is added that, at first 
a seeming wilderness, the vision changed and it be- 
came the homestead of succeeding generations of his 
family. Thus influenced, he embarked and landed 
with his household on the eleventh of September, 
1725, near ISTew Garden, Pennsylvania. After relat- 
ting his dream, he was directed by friends to an 
unoccupied tract near hy, which to his wonder re- 
sembled closely the pleasant valley of his vision. 
Assisted by stalwart sons he soon established a com- 



43 

fortable homestead. His grandsons devoted a portion 
of the adjoining tract to a botanical garden, and a 
great-grandson further improved it by plantations of 
evergreens and deciduous trees now forming a some- 
what noted grove. The garden ranked at that period 
among the first botanical gardens of the country. 
It is an interesting question for the student of heredity, 
how far we may attribute to a strain in the blood 
that taste for landscape-gardening and horticulture 
which resulted so happily for our College in the 
adornment of its garden, which with vale and brook 
and hillside-spring resembles so remarkably that of 
the ancestral dream. 

Professor Jackson has left on record a brief but in- 
teresting estimate of the family as "honest, industri- 
ous, sufficiently-enterprising. God-fearing, Grod-loving 
people, with very few ' Honorables ' so-called among 
them and not a single millionnaire ; men and women 
discharging the ^Drovidential responsibilities of their 
several stations in a manner satisfactory even to that 
good man who, in a community where all were honest, 
was commonly called by his friends and neighbors, 
honest William Jackson." 

From this God-fearing, honest and sufficiently pros- 
perous stock, was born at Cornwall, Orange county, 
in this State, on the twenty-eighth of August, in the 
year 1804, the son who received the old family name 
of Isaac and whom we have known as Professor Isaac 
W. Jackson. Both of his parents Avere members of 
the Society of Friends. The scenery of the neighbor- 
hood, which early made its impression upon him, was 
as beautiful and striking as that which had welcomed 
upon landing in America the forefather after whom 
he was named. In his childhood and during the long 



44 

life of his honored mother, he was a faithful and de- 
voted son. The talents which he manifested in his 
early youth induced his friends to send him from home, 
to secure the best advantages of academic education. 
He had a taste for mathematics and mechanics which 
was not unusual in the family, one of his uncles having 
invented a method in logarithms ; while an old clock, 
bearing the family name and an early date, is still pre- 
served, both as a memento of its maker and as an ex- 
cellent time-piece. His interest and progress in his 
studies were such that after receiving the ordinary 
schooling of the vicinity he was sent in his seventeenth 
year to the Albany Academy. 

" The first knowledge I had of my old friend," wrote 
Doctor Lewis, " — I may call him so, though a number 
of years my junior — was in the city of Albany in 1823. 
I was then a law-student, he a boy in the Academy. 
Two things drew to him more than the usual notice. 
One was his youthful Quaker coat, and the other the 
distinction of being even at that time a most superior 
mathematician. I must not omit a third fact that 
brought him — boy as he was — before the public eye. 
At that period when Albany was an intensely Federal 
city, there predominated in the Legislature a peculiar 
species of Democrats called Bucktails. The name is 
to be found in ancient newspaper files though the 
variety itself has long since been extinct and fossilized. 
They had ventured upon the hazardous political strata- 
gem of ejecting De Witt Clinton from the office of 
Canal Commissioner, although the very creator of 
the canal policy. It was too much for our youthful 
mathematician, absorbed as he was in geometry and 
logarithms. He made the outrage the theme of his 
public academic exercise and exposed the atrocious 



45 

meanness of the transaction in a most ' scathing Phi- 
lippic/ as our sensational reporters say. The public 
prints took special notice of it. It became an exciting 
subject of conversation throughout the city ; and its 
stripling of an author, if I am not mistaken, was in 
some peril of being brought before the senate on a 
' question of privilege.' I mention the incident as 
showing what the indignant orator might have become, 
had he devoted himself to politics instead of the higher 
pursuits with which his intellectual life has been oc- 
cupied." 

Having completed his studies at the Academy with 
the highest honors both in the classics and mathe- 
matics, he entered Union College, where he attained 
high standing in the classics and from which in 1826, 
in his twenty-second year, he graduated with the first 
honors in mathematics and chemistry. He was at 
once appointed a Tutor in the College. Here, as at 
the Academy, it was evident that he possessed charac- 
teristics hardly compatible with the quiet spirit of 
Quakerism. He became actively interested in mili- 
tary drill and, having been chosen captain of the 
College company, retained that position long after 
graduation. Alumni fond of praising the good old 
times remind us that the " Captain " received his 
commission from President ^N'ott in the summer of 
1828 after unanimous election to the post by Com- 
pany A of the Union College Cadets ; and that he 
was promoted, receiving the title of Major; " but as 
no later title nor achievement of the Pirst ]^apoleon 
could displace in the hearts of his soldiers that of 
' The Little Corporal,' so, not that brilliant manoeuvre 
which scaled the heights of Catskill under the fire of 
a July sun nor the triumphant march upon Port 



46 

William Henry and ultimately to the gates of the 
Capitol could give our Major any prouder and dearer 
title with his * boys/ than that of ' Captain.' " " Mar- 
shalling the classes for that well-ordered procession of 
Commencement, what a figure he used to make in 
those days ! Some remains of the Quaker style of 
dress still accompanying the military show, and the 
flourishing of the Grand Marshal's baton, gave it 
an appearance as picturesque as it was original." 
In his later years, Doctor Jackson pointed often to 
the improved bodily vigor, carriage and manners of 
the students, as indicating the wisdom of the system 
of military drill and physical culture. He rejoiced 
towards the close of his life to see the system suc- 
cessfully revived and he seconded cordially the efforts 
of the military officer detailed by the General Gov- 
ernment for this duty. He watched the erection of 
our large gymnasium with interest, since he held 
that the College cannot fulfil its duty without send- 
ing forth into the battle of life graduates trained 
in body as well as in mind. His garden was a source 
of health and prolonged life to him and showed the 
advantage of exercise in the open air and of an in- 
terest outside the routine of a profession. Yet he was 
far from giving undue prominence to physical, when 
contrasted with intellectual culture. Intellectual labor 
rather than rest, was the rule of his life. Friends 
sometimes warned him against overwork and it may 
be thought that, had he labored less, he might have 
lived even longer. Possibly, and his life from the 
beginning to the end of it might have been of little 
value to anyone. Intellectual as well as physical toil 
is healthful ; labor is life, long life often, honorable 
and useful life. The instances — and they are many 



47 

among graduates of this College besides Seward, 
Lewis and himself — in which the slight and frugal 
toilers wore out and distanced men more muscular 
but less intellectually active, these instances suggest 
that enthusiasm for physical training should not sur- 
pass that for intellectual culture. Canon Kingsley, 
the noble advocate of Muscular Christianity as it has 
been called, scarce lived out half his days ; and from 
the career of Dickens and of others physically as 
active, we are led to conclude that over-excitement 
and those twin emissaries of Satan, hurry and worry, 
are greater enemies to the longevity of brain-workers 
than the most intense, industrious, recluse, yet 
regular and frugal, life. 

In this connection we may recall the fact that during 
his college course, with the cooperation of a band of 
congenial companions, some of whom have since 
attained to positions of eminent usefulness — among 
them Orlando Meads, LL.D., and Thomas Hun, 
M.D., LL.D. — he founded and maintained a society 
for social and literary purposes. In succeeding years, 
other like associations were formed; and hence 
Union College has been called the mother of the 
Greek-letter secret societies of the country. Doctor 
•Jackson felt that the confidences of friendship, like the 
confidences of the family, though secret, may be none 
the less innocent; and the older he grew the more 
confident he became that a useful and salutary method 
had been devised by which College students might 
have such enjoyment as they craved, without violating 
the canons of morality or religion ; the grave and the 
gay in temperament being mutually benefited, while 
the oldest College officer and graduate as well as the 
youngest might enter into close relations of confidence 



48 

and friendship with undergraduates. Youths in the 
stage of life most needing the cordial intimacy of elder 
friends that they may receive in the right spirit their 
cautions and counsels, often lose these blessings through 
supposed lack of sympathy or because of artificial bar- 
riers. Professor Jackson hoped to remedy this evil by 
an association of younger and older members, both 
undergraduates and Alumni, who should be inspired by 
brotherly sentiments like those of home and church. 
Whatever be the counter-arguments and whether or 
not he builded in his youth better than he knew, such 
was the institution of the Greek-letter secret society 
in his conception of it; and as he believed, such was 
it to a great extent in its development. Hopeful and 
warm-hearted sentiments, characteristic of the man 
and which every member of such a society should 
strive to realize ! 

He was promoted to the Professorship of Mathe- 
matics in the year 1831. His section, comprising 
in accordance with our College system the rooms of 
the students underhis more immediate charge, adjoined 
his residence or rather, by the construction of the 
building, formed part of it. He treated these students 
as responsible to himself mainly and like members of 
his family. He had access to their rooms at all times 
of the day and night, and his visits were frequent and 
friendly. He would turn the point of ill nature by a 
well-timed joke and meet serious wrong-doing with 
fatherly expostulation. Kind to the erring, he could 
crush vice relentlessly ; and under the easy companion- 
ship which disarmed opposition, were the firmness and 
strength which gained the desired end. In his class- 
room, those were taught the topics of the text-book 
who desired to learn them ; and those who in addition 



49 

desired to solve the abstruse problems of higher 
mathematics, found that his clear and powerful in- 
tellect elucidated each step of the most obscure 
processes and conclusions. 

Professor Foster states that when sent to " Captain 
Jackson " for his entrance-examination in algebra, 
havino; Driven much more study to the classics than to 
mathematics, he found himself with several pairs of 
excited nerves in the august presence. The questions 
proposed were more comprehensive than numerous ; 
What were the rules ? and Why were they thus ? On 
this latter point the old school text-book had been 
grandly reticent. Its readers should receive the rules 
as objects for faith and not for vain curiosity as to 
their source or the reasoning upon which they had 
been founded. The captain graciously considered 
these facts, admitted the plea based upon them in bar 
of adverse judgment, but accompanied the desired cer- 
tificate w^ith a gentle intimation that he regarded the 
recipient as not well grounded; as an unprincipled 
youth, in fact, who would do well at the earliest possi- 
ble moment to make the acquaintance of some author 
who would condescend to give reasons for his rules. 
The advice was not given in vain. 

When students were indisposed or unable to grasp 
the mathematical problems and principles of the text- 
book, it was seen that be was indeed no pedagogue, but 
an educator inspiring mental activity by indirect sug- 
gestion. He published books on Trigonometry, Op- 
tics, Conic Sections and Mechanics, which were adopted 
in American colleges and in one important British in- 
stitution; one of these works drawing from a competent 
authority the remark that he could not wish a single 
4 



50 

sentence changed; but in these productions Professor 
Jackson had no view to reputation ; he based them on 
the observed needs of his classes and designed them 
directly for their help. The obituary record of the 
Faculty well declares, that, thoroughly conversant 
with that inductive method by the employment of 
which so large a portion of our knowledge has been 
obtained, he delighted in familiarizing his pupils with 
its principles and in illustrating its application to the 
discovery of new facts. 

As an executive officer of the College he was prompt, 
energetic, ever watchful and active, selecting his 
measures judiciously and pursuing them with discre- 
tion. The severity of his earlier conceptions of disci- 
pline was modified by the influence of one whom he 
loved and assisted most faithfully — the late President 
'Nott — and whom he revered as " the majestic man, 
the first of college presidents, the true founder and 
guardian genius of this institution." Whatever there 
may have been of severity and impetuosity in his 
nature, was at length mellowed through experience, 
inborn kindliness and Christian charity, until at last 
nothing so marked the man as forbearance with youth, 
tender oversight and friendly counsel ; traits which 
won from his students a regard ripening with years into 
abiding respect and love. Thus in presenting him with 
a beautiful token of esteem, a number of his former 
pupils improved the occasion to say that " they can- 
not express their high appreciation of the great-hearted 
man whose long life of usefulness has been so filled 
with beauty and whose unwavering kindness contri- 
buted so much to make their college days a joyful 
recollection." He could be patient with the exu- 
berance of youthful spirits and even with seeming 



51 

disregard of liis wishes and seeming disrespect toward 
himself. IIoav many have testified to the long-snffer- 
ing patience and encouraging counsel with which he 
sought to reclaim the erring ! This Christian spirit, 
the growth of years of experience and patient endeavor, 
is one which we who are members of this Faculty 
may all well emulate. 

In his family as well as in general intercourse, he 
was social and genial. Often in the evenings, coming 
out from his study to the drawing-room, he contributed 
his share of entertainment by reading aloud or by his 
cheerful and instructive conversation. When absent 
he wrote daily to those at home. lie was interested 
in the progress and watchful of the health and educa- 
tion of his children. In my childhood, with an instinc- 
tive appreciation of his filial devotion I have often 
watched him wheeling along the garden-chair which 
he had devised for the comfort of his aged mother, de- 
lighting in her enjoyment of the scene and pointing 
out the beauties of flower-bed, lawn or grove, which 
he kept and dressed with unceasing care. 

He was always neatly and simply attired ; slight in 
form, well-built and active, with clear, piercing eye 
looking out from under a large and prominent brow; 
his head finely developed ; his voice frank and friendly 
as he welcomed one to his study or garden. And that 
garden played no small part in extending the reputa- 
tion and influence of the College. It is said that before 
the present excellent equipment in apparatus for the 
several departments was acquired. President l^ott used 
to invite the inquiring visitor to call on Professor 
Jackson and to walk through the garden ; thus not 
only producing a pleasant general impression of the 
College, but emphasizing the beauty, healthfulncss 



52 

and capabilities of its situation. The cordial recep- 
tion given by Professor Jackson but exemplified the 
spirit of hospitality for which the College was distin- 
guished. 

His household gave ample proof of the presence of 
an efhcient and cultured helpmeet. It was the prized 
resort of a large and cultivated circle of relatives and 
friends from abroad. During Commencement week 
especially, " open house " was kept and students 
and returning graduates found a hearty welcome. The 
importance of such hospitality in attracting youth to 
the institution and in moulding and refining student- 
life —7 especially with that controlling portion of the 
public who value the elegant amenities of society — 
cannot be over-estimated. 'No matter what one's in- 
tellectual gifts and efforts, he suffers great disadvan- 
tages in the race of life without some share of these 
graces. We may well hold, with Bacon in his Ad- 
vancement of Learning, that while behavior or " the 
Wisdom of Conversation ought not to be overmuch 
affected, much less ought it to be despised ; for it hath 
not only honor in itself but an infiuence also with 
business and government. The poet saith, ISTec vultu 
destrue verba tua. A man may destroy the force 
of his words with his countenance ; so may he of his 
deeds. Saith Cicero, recommending to his brother 
affability and easy access, Ml interest habere ostiam 
apertam, vultum clausum. And if the government 
of the countenance be of such effect, much more is 
that of speech and other carriage appertaining to con- 
versation ; the true model whereof seemeth to me well 
expressed by Livy, though not meant for this purpose : 
jN"e aut arrogans videar, aut obnoxius ; quorum alterum 
est aliense libertatis obliti, alterum suse." 



53 

Doctor Jackson's table was noted, if for its simplic- 
ity yet also for its excellence, as Professor Lewis re- 
minded us in his reminiscences at the semi-centennial 
celebration ; and many another favored friend has re- 
membered the College through the same pleasant asso- 
ciation. He cooperated with those sensible and 
philanthropic men and women who are striving to 
popularize economical, healthful and palatable cook- 
ery. He often purchased the works and tested the 
methods of those who seek so to educate poor and 
rich alike that the dinner, whether of herbs or of the 
stalled ox, may have good digestion, health and con- 
tent therewith. 

The salaries of collegiate professors are often de- 
clared to be too small to permit their enjoyment of the 
elegancies or even of the comforts of life and the pleas- 
ures of charity to the needy. But although Professor 
Jackson's means were very limited, his home, as we 
have seen, was a model of hospitality, and his charities, 
although at the cost of self-denial, were abundant. 
He indulged also for " our four-footed friends " — the 
comfortable old horse, the graceful hound, and other 
animals dear to his domestic circle — a care that would 
have satisfied the heart of their public champion Mr. 
Bergh. In addition to these objects, he contributed 
from his own means toward the maintenance of his 
beloved garden , expending on its construction and 
embellishment — as he stated privately a short time 
before his decease — from first to last a sum of about 
ten thousand dollars. On commencing his residence 
in the College building, he found a few beds of poor 
flowers or vegetables and, adjoining them, a rude, 
tangled vale. He left a garden well-ordered, widely 
extended, filled with select plants, shrubs and flowers, 
the long, shady rambles and sun-lit glades of which 



64 

became one of the most attractive possessions of the 
College. He cultivated over three hundred varieties 
of roses, corresponded and exchanged with the best 
horticulturists of England and America, improved 
many species and distributed far and wide the new 
seeds; thus laying this State especially under great 
material obligations in waj^s not recognized. A house- 
hold and its surroundings managed thus shows what a 
good heart, clear judgment and diligent hand can 
accomplish with slender means; audit further shows 
that in the exemption from extravagant expenditures, 
in the regularity of even a meagre stipend, in the com- 
parative permanence and the social influence of our 
professorial positions and in the opportunities for cul- 
ture and usefuhiess, there are compensations which may 
well attract the best character and talent of the times. 
It is needless here to say that tlie science and art of 
horticulture were a delight and solace of the Pro- 
fessor's life. Valuable works on this subject make up a 
large part of his library. Ilis aftection for his shrubs 
and flowers was like that manifested by old Erasmus 
Darwin in his quaint poem on the^' Loves of the 
Plants ; " new varieties grew as if by magic beneath 
his hands. The bowers and walks of his creation be- 
came familiar haunts, lit up by the joyous presence of 
youths and maidens and troops of children, while often 
the old came halting back to revive once more the 
memories and emotions of other days. These grounds 
having been committed to his care and improved 
and extended during a long period by his own hand, 
he learned with pleasure in the last year of his life 
that a fund had been projected for continuing his 
work. lie could receive no more appropriate memo- 
rial tribute. 



55 

His life centered in and was mainly bounded by bis 
College. It was j^assed in bis family circle, bis study, 
bis class-room or witb members of tbe Faculty. 
He avoided occasions of personal prominence. Wben 
tbe degree of Doctor of Laws was conferred upon bim 
by Hobart College, bis modesty led bim to besitate 
before accepting it. In social intercourse be- consid- 
erately turned tbe conversation toward tbe interests 
> of otbers ratber tban bis own, drawing tbem out 

pleasantly and speaking of subjects wbicb tbey could 
discuss to advantage. He always expressed bimself 
witb clearness and simplicity and often witb elegance. 
While be wrote readily, be reviewed bis diction care- 
fully and altered and polisbed it until acceptable to 
bis critical taste. His diary, bis study, bis bouse- 
bold and all bis affairs, wbetber relatively great or 
^g*i-^' small, sbow tbat be was determined to do wbatever 
be attempted, as well as be could. His intellectual 
concentration and perseverance were sucb tbat be 
could not rest satisfied until be bad completed wbat 
be bad deliberately undertaken. Conscientious and 
regular in bis attendance upon public worsbip, yet 
as to bis personal feelings and meditations upon re- 
ligion and otber sacred topics be was cbaracterized by 
a Quaker-like reticence, wbicb bowever never pre- 
vented bim at tbe critical moment from speaking 
and acting boldly for tbe rigbt. He was always 
sympatbetic, especially so witb tbe sorrowing and 
the needy. Professor Henry of tbe Smithsonian 
Institute, an honorary Alumnus of this Institution, 
who was bis fellow-student in boyhood and bis life- 
long correspondent, said that be was " the truest 
and most generous soul he ever knew." His chari- 
ties were from the heart as well as from the hand 
and he concealed their objects and extent. A 



56 

nervous system extremely sensitive to physical pain 
and moral excitements might cause at times a certain 
irritability or impatience of manner, but the soul, 
the true man, was patient and forbearing even to 
tenderness. More than most men of his time, he 
possessed a trait which, a thoughtful observer has re- 
marked, is, of all the moral qualities, the one becoming 
most rare — childlikeness, genuine simplicity of char- 
acter and a modest fearlessness ; such as Goldsmith 
and Wordsworth sometimes manifested, such as Hans 
Christian Andersen possessed to a fault and Ruskin 
has at times evinced as a mild radiance relieving 
periods of storm and change. Doctor Jackson felt 
with Doctor Lewis that the humble faith of some child- 
like believer elucidates at times the meaning of God's 
word more clearly than the learning of the undevout 
scholar. In his case as in that of his friend Doctor 
Lewis, to a life of good works was joined a life of sim- 
ple. Christian faith. He had no sympathy with that 
scientific pharisaism which, in the search after im- 
possible certainty, reaches the creed of universal 
nihilism; nor with such boasted positivism as that 
which forbids belief in anything we cannot see or feel 
or fathom, like a blind prisoner beating his body 
against the cold walls and bars of his narrow cell and 
calling out madly. Only the tangible exists ; only 
that which I feel or handle or comprehend is positive ; 
faith is a falsehood ; be^'-ond the limits of my narrow 
cell, there is nothing, no orbs of light, no nobler modes 
of life, no spiritual truths, no immortality, no Heaven, 
no God ! 

Fulfilling the duties of his position ably, faithfully, 
contentedly, no achievements of wealth or fame could 
have brought him wider usefulness or higher happi- 



57 

ness ; for thousands of the educated men of the country 
attest their gratitude for his aid in the development 
of mind and character. 

'No less noticeable was his high appreciation of order 
and beauty in the natural and in the moral world, his 
discriminating delight in the best literature, ancient 
and modern, his love of justice, and his sympathy 
with the oppressed. Doctor Jackson's view of life in- 
} the retrospect was like that so strikingly expressed 

by the Rt. Honorable Mr. Gladstone, in his letter 
regretting his inability to address us as Honorary 
Chancellor of Union University : — "I have but one 
complaint to make : life is too full, time too rapid ; 
which in truth means that the provision Divinely made 
for our exercise and growth is too bounteous. But it 
produces a relative penury of power to do the duties 
that are waiting and crying out to be done." 

The civil war roused his patriotic heart to the 
highest enthusiasm. Like his ancestors, who had 
suffered loss of all things for conscience' sake, possess- 
ing the courage of his convictions, he manifested an im- 
petuous fervor of attack upon whatever excited right- 
eous indignation. His sense of honor and his moral 
rectitude made him impatient of false assumption and 
indignant at persistence in oppression and wrong. 
He was always an open foe, withstanding his opponent 
to his face. He cordially approved of the enlistment 
of his son William, a man of rare ability, presence and 
personal magnetism; and when, a sacrifice to his 
country's cause, his loved remains were brought 
home. Doctor Jackson received them with unmurmur- 
ing submission and followed them to the grave with 
Christian resignation. In no conventional sense but 
with the true spirit of patriotic devotion, he traced as 



58 

the inscription for the granite monument of his son 
words familiar but immortal, at once classical in 
language and Christ-like in sentiment of self-sacrifice .- 

Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. 

At the close of the war for the Union, while the 
country at the north was prosperous, Union College 
was felt to be in a critical condition, declining steadily 
during many years in prestige, influence and numbers. 
Doctor Jackson was among the first to comprehend 
the situation. The institution having depended for 
more than half a century for its endowment and suc- 
cess upon one man of exceptional genius, it was re- 
quisite for its future usefulness that it should no 
longer be dependent upon any one alone, but that a 
broader foundation should be sought in the sympathy, 
influence and watchful care of its Alumni and of all 
others naturally interested in its well-being. Having 
been founded upon the principles of Christian unity. 
Union College, lacking denominational support, had 
claims upon the yet broader patronage of all desiring 
the fulfilment of our Lord's high-priestly prayer for 
unity; and might also turn hopefully to the unusual 
number of influential and successful men in all parts 
of the land to whom she had given eflicient practical 
as well as literary training. Professor Jackson there- 
fore sent forth ringing appeals to the graduates to or- 
ganize local Alumni Associations. Not content with 
circulars or stereotyped forms of address, he Wrote 
with his own hand letter upon letter, studying the 
character of all who had been his pupils, seeking how 
most effectuall}^ to move each one of them and rest- 
ing not, day nor night, until hearty aflirmative re- 
sponses poured in from all quarters. On the memor- 



59 

able evening of April twenty-seventh, 1869, telegra- 
phic greetings flew to Union College from "New York 
and the principal cities of the State, and from the East 
and West and South, laden with the cordial expressions 
of the Alumni gathered at their banquets. They 
abounded in the warmest expressions of devotion to 
Alma Mater and to Professor Jackson, her represen- 
tative on the occasion. The excellence of the ad- 
dresses, the eminence of the speakers, the character of 
the representative Alumni, the simultaneous outburst 
of loyalty, made the movement as conspicuously use- 
ful and admirable as it was unparalleled. But unfortu- 
nately, it was believed at the same time and widely 
proclaimed that the College was richer than any ot 
her children and needed no aid but their sympathy 
and influence. The fever of development of real estate 
following the war ran high. The Trust in land pro- 
vided by Doctor l^ott was considered of vast value if 
onl}' held for further improvements and rise in prices. 
Thus the moment for immediate profitable sale or lease 
slipped by ; the high tide in the liberal endowment ot 
educational institutions needing and making known 
their needs, also slipped by Avithout the requisite 
effort for this College. It was not long before this 
mistake began to be felt. Doctor Jackson lived to 
see with deep anxiety the depreciation of the unpro- 
ductive and heavily assessed estate which chiefly 
composed the property of the institution. 

When I was invited to take the Presidency of the 
College, Doctor Jackson urged my acceptance as a 
duty. After several interviews it was arranged 
that, devolving upon its efficient Faculty much con 
nected with the ordinary routine of the College, the 
in-coming President should carry foward undertakings 



60 

long since begun ; sucli as tlie increase of the Library, 
the completion of the Alumni Hall, the provision of 
special facilities for the several departments together 
with the increase of the means for general culture. 
But the yearly support of the College ; the increase of 
its regular income to meet proper salaries and other 
usual expenditures; provision against deficiencies until 
the real-estate investments could be improved; and 
endowments for general and ordinary purposes ; this 
was rightly the broad field for the efforts of Trustees, 
Alumni, Faculty, citizens and friends of Christian 
unity and of education. Professor Jackson was con- 
vinced, and the history of Colleges shows his sagacity, 
that the continuous power of such corporations de- 
pends upon the efforts of the many as w^ell as the 
devotion of a few, upon all friends interested in 
education and especially upon the Alumni. Know- 
ing that while the individual dies institutions sur- 
vive, he sought for the College a life not individual 
or circumscribed but widely expanded. He was will- 
ing to work and wait for such an era. The College 
would thus gain a responsible, perpetual constituency, 
active for its honor, its usefulness and its progress. 
Doctor Jackson saw with gratitude more than three 
hundred th ousand dollars secured, mainly toward those 
objects — buildings, Library and scholarships — to 
which the efforts of the President had been directed; 
he knew this sum to exceed in amount all our educa- 
tional Funds or Trusts acquired during the previous 
three-quarters of a century except the E'ott Trust now 
yielding but little for College purposes. That sum, 
however, was not larger than the outlay in a single 
year of some of our prominent competitors. Mean- 
while, this institution had no share in the Congres- 
sional land-grants ; and the many new colleges and 



61 

universities were'divicling college patronage and add- 
ing costly attractions. Doctor Jackson therefore 
earnestly desired the furtherance of the definite 
though not inflexible plan by which it was hoped 
to maintain Union in its just position among its 
peers. The incorporation in 1876 of Union Univer- 
sity — the idea of which had long slumbered in our 
charter — was a portion of that plan. He wrote 
of it in the first University catalogue : "Union Col- 
lege acquired, by its charter, full university powers ; 
but the creation of post-graduate institutions at Sche- 
nectady had not been found practicable. Schools of 
Law and Medicine and also an Astronomical Obser- 
vatory had long existed at Albany, the distance 
between which city and Schenectady, estimated in 
time, is less than that which in many cases separates 
the professional schools from the other departments 
of a university. The arrangement naturally sug- 
gested by these circumstances was that the pro- 
fessional schools and the Observatory at Albany 
should be united with Union College. The union of 
the several institutions — although each will continue 
to hold its own rights, properties and Trusts as here- 
tofore — was consummated by the incorporation, for 
university purposes, of Union University." 

Doctor Jackson learned with approval that the 
resources at command would be henceforth devoted 
to the educational departments. He saw with satis- 
faction the raising of the standard of scholarship and 
the actual improvement under it, and a total increase 
in numbers despite losses through greater rigor of 
examinations. He concurred in discouraging the pre- 
valent tendency to luxury and extravagance which, 
alien to the spirit of our national institutions and to 



62 

the colleo^e usages of earlier times, has never found a 
place at Union ; a tendency which threatens to injure 
the sons of the rich and to exclude or mortify the 
sons of the poor. He would have seen their college da^'s 
characterized by simple habits and by enthusiasm for 
educational rather than social objects. 

If we admit with Lord Chatham that confidence is a 
plant of slow growth, and with Doctor Jackson that 
after the " trials of the last quarter-century those 
laboring for the College have before them an arduous 
task," yet w^ith him we have faith in her motto, 
" Perseverantia vincit ; " and w^e believe that her trials 
were designed to disclose alike her needs and her 
resources, so that upon the broader foundation may 
stand the superstructure of enduring success. 

Doctor Jackson had been deeply interested in 
the war for the Union; but when at its close he 
longed for peace and for the cessation of all sectional 
animosities, he thought it a most happy omen that 
among the first considerable endoAvments secured 
was one designed mainl}^ (though not exclusively) for 
the benefit of students from the southern States and 
meeting many of the expenses incident to their resi- 
dence at College ; at the same time, bringing the 
ISTorth and the South into friendly contact and thus per- 
petuating the influence of one who loved both national 
and Christian unity. I allude to the John David 
Wolfe Scholarships Foundation, of fifty thousand dol- 
lars, the gift of filial afiection in memory of one of 
N'ew York's most benevolent merchant princes. 

The culmination of Doctor Jackson's career was in 
1876, at the semi-centennial anniversary of his connec- 
tion with the College. Can we forget the scene ? the 
hundreds of graduates gathering from all parts of the 



63 

land ; the Memorial Hall ringing with cheers of wel- 
come and with his praises ; his modesty at the ban- 
quet of the Alumni of wdiich he was the honored 
guest; and how^, on the Commencement morning, 
his dear friend, Doctor Lewis, spoke as the old man 
eloquent to the old man grand and true ? Recalling 
his acquaintance with him in his youth as inspiring 
an admiration which deepened into the friendship of 
a lifetime, Doctor Lewis's voice grew strong and 
clear as he said, " He has lived a most useful and 
honorable life. It must have been a happy one. To 
say nothing here of that all-transcending element of 
the Divine grace, in which, I trust, he has been a 
sharer, he has had a clear mind constantly gazing 
upon the science of certainty, as it may be called, in 
contrast with the dimness and doubt and shadow that 
rest upon almost all the provinces of human thought. 
To this, has been added the most charming of out- 
ward pursuits. I refer to his cultivation, for so many 
years, of that beautiful garden we are all so fond of 
visiting. It must have been a happy life. Surely 
may we congratulate him on having possessed two 
such elements of physical and intellectual serenity. 
His life belongs to the past and has nothmg to fear 
for the future. Of the love of his classes, he is sure. 
The warm esteem of every one who has ever sat 
under his teaching, the unfeigned respect of all who 
have ever been his colleagues, this is his literary in- 
heritance as long as Dnion College holds a place 
among the institutions of our land; and may that be 
as long as our land holds its place among the nations 
of the earth ! " As Doctor Lewis ceased, he stood 
where I now stand; and Doctor Jackson, rising from 
his seat beside him, acknowledged with the warm 



64 

grasp of his hand the loving greeting of his old friend 
and coadjutor. Thus- lovely and pleasant in their 
lives, it v^as fitting that in death they should not be 
divided. 

What changes in history, letters, society and in the 
institutions and industries of this country and in the 
materia], educational and religious interests of the 
world at large occurred during the span of this one life, 
V7hich, just as he became conscious of failing powers, 
ebbed tranquilly away in sleep ! 

It was in the bright sunlight of a summer afternoon, 
in the garden, which by his care had just reached its 
most perfect condition, and under the great elm which 
he loved, that his friends gathered for funeral rites 
befitting the departed. It is a usage of the Moravian 
church with which those of us who are descendants of 
Friends sympathize, to banish tokens of heathenish 
despair from their burial service, that all things may 
betoken the joy and peace of the Christian entering 
into the reward of his Lord. And thus, as our honored 
friend would have wished, without ostentatious dis- 
play, his bier borne by the College workmen and 
surrounded by his life-long and loved associates, with 
bloom and brightness, and Christian ho]De and the 
peace that passeth understanding breathed in the 
very atmosphere of that fair and tranquil afternoon, 
was the appropriate service said by his pupil and his 
friend, close beside the home of his wedded life. 
Before the stars, as silent guardians, had appeared, 
and while the sun still hung resplendent above the 
horizon, the long procession having reached the por- 
tion of the College cemetery beautified by his reverent 
care, the last rites were said, the grave was closed 
and fiowers of his rearing covered it. 



66 

Our two venerable friends, Professor Lewis and 
Professor Jackson, departing so nearly together, also 
rest together, after a life-journcj travelled side by side. 
Thus have we seen two pilgrims on their way. 
The first, listening attentively to all voices and sounds, 
finds in their mystery and method deep delight. 
To him the winter storm wails its melancholy, or re- 
sounds its sublime tokens of power and majesty, as 
though speaking a personal message. When the 
summer zephyrs whispered their bewildering secrets 
to his boyhood's imagination, when the thunders 
pealed their anthems to his mature mind, they found 
in him an appreciative and rapt listener. The song of 
the bird and the roll of the storm, nature's separate 
melodies and its united chorus, seemed to his sympa- 
thetic soul to resound the praises of the Creator. In 
his latest days he made his highest and holiest achieve- 
ments. The Hebrew tongue had become to him 
as his own, and his utterances as to the word of God 
sped from land to land, illuminating deep valleys of 
ignorance, w^hile his masterly exegesis of the Bible 
led many a captive soul out of the darkness of doubt 
into the marvellous light of the kingdom of Christ. 
But even before he reached these heights, the sounds 
of earth replete with mysteries of tenderness and 
sublimity were growing indistinct. The branches of 
snow-laden pines swayed in the storm but made no 
moan ; nature reeled beneath the shock of the winter 
blast but its grand diapason was to his ear silent. 
Loving lips opened and the air was laden with greet- 
ings of reverence and afiection, but the tympanum 
gave no record and the fondest utterances fell dead. 
At the close of his pilgrimage, this Christian scholar 
who had delighted in melody and harmony and human 
5 



66 

speech walked onward in a voiceless world. From 
this lower sphere, as from the upper realms of light, 
there was left for him but the sad assurance of the 
poet Addison in his favorite hymn, though with a new 
and striking application : 

What though in solemn silence all 
Move round this dark terrestrial ball? 
What though no real voice nor sound 
Among their radiant orbs be found ? 
In reason's ear they all rejoice 
- And utter forth a glorious voice. 

With duty done and heart at peace, this pilgrim 
toil-worn in his Master's service laid him down to 
rest and fell " asleep in Jesus." 

There were two pilgrims pressing forward and 
journeying ofttimes together. While he whom we have 
first commemorated possessed an ear attuned to sound, 
this fellow-pilgrim had given him of God an eye 
which, like the eagle's, gazed upon the sun. To him 
light was a perpetual study and joy. His glance, 
early lifted toward the stars, in thought through long 
years rested there. The night-watches were sweet to 
him hecause of the planets' presence, their deep and 
glowing mysteries, their atmospheric beauties, their 
exhaustless splendors. From the outset of his pilgrim- 
age, the consideration of their movements fascinated 
his attention ; and soon pure mathematics revealed 
to him celestial secrets. He knew the thrilling delight 
with which the solution of a difiicult problem is re- 
warded. Above poetry and music or beauty in any 
other form, much as his aesthetic nature appreciated 
them, above all else his delight was in the Law 
of God as seen in principles of mathematics and 
laws of astronomy. He outwatched the stars to study 



67 

them and burned the midnight oil in pondering the 
laws of light. Lifting his eyes toward the vault 
studded with God's suns and systems he felt flowing 
thence successive waves which, falling upon human 
orbs as upon welcome shores, told there the secrets with 
which they come laden to those gifted to interpret 
them. Astronomy was to him, as to Plato, an essential 
element in educating and inspiring mind and soul ; 
pure mathematics was a sacred science, the science 
of ever-being, the science with which Pythagoras 
believed creation to begin and end its universal though 
voiceless oratorio. Yet light came not alone to 
illustrate law and to advance science, but also to 
reveal and to embellish earth's beauties. This pil- 
grim saw with joy, lights, revelations of color' and 
of form, fair shapes of tree and shrub and flower. 
His aflections w^ent out and rested on them and he 
passed his life among them. Botany, with mathemat- 
ical relations in some respects akin to those of 
astronomy while no less filled than is the general re- 
pertory of nature with entrancing sequences and 
harmonics, is also replete with instruction for mind 
and eye. Thus his chosen paths became more and 
more the walks of an expanding garden which was 
the outward embodiment of his thought and love. Of 
him it might have been said, as Wordsworth wrote 
of Duty, 

Flowers laugh before him ia their beds, 
And fragrance in his fouling ireads. 

And light came not merely to illustrate law and 
advance science and adorn nature. It spoke to him 
of the Divine Person who said. Let there be light. 
If the undevout astronomer is mad, if " the fool bath 
said in his heart, ' There is no God,'" light, which he 



68 

loved, led this pilgrim to say in Ms heart of hearts, in 
the very spirit of the seer of old, " When I consider 
the heavens which Thou hast made, the moon and the 
stars which Thou hast ordained, then my soul pro- 
claims thy glory, thy goodness. I bow and adore 
thy Being in the temple of the universe whose 
foundations Thou hast laid, whose irresponsible suns 
and systems and responsible souls Thou hast created, 
whose Eedeemer Thou hast sent forth upon his 
merciful mission of re-creation." 

Thus this pilgrim had loved the stars and flowers, 
the light of heaven and its fair reflection on the earth, 
the laws of pure mathematics, and the wondrous re- 
velations of form and color which, but for light, were 
unseen or non-existent. At last he too was nearing 
his journey's end. Suddenly the fear of a horror of 
great darkness fell upon him, such as that which, 
brooding over Milton, inspired his immortal lines in 
praise of light, and his lament. 

These eyes, thougli clear 
To outward view of blemish and of spot, 
Bereft of light, their seeing have forgot ; 
Nor to the idle orbs dotli sight appear 
Of sun or moon or stars, throughout the year. 

But this fear, which, as a threatening cloud, over-shad- 
owed our pilgrim's pathway for a time, was mercifully 
removed. Sight yet remained to him and as his natural 
force abated he too gained the delectable mountains 
whence poets and prophets tell of glimpses granted 
them of the glories of the promised land. Then, weary 
and worn in the cause of duty and with no spoken 
word of the ravishing view which lay just before him, 
he, like his fellow-pilgrim, fell tranquilly into that last 
sleep which knows no earthly waking. 



69 

For them, the sleep of death is not the end of life. 
That elder pilgrim whose ear was deaf to earthly 
sound wakes in the realm where the believer's faith 
has gained the fruition of the inspired exclamation, 
" I HEARD as it were the voice of a great multitude 
and of many waters and of mighty thunderings say- 
ing, Alleluia ! for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth. 
Let us he glad and rejoice and give honor to Him." 
This other pilgrim whose joy was in the light and 
who dreaded the on-coming of the loss of vision, wakes 
to the blissful realization of the meaning of those 
other words of the Apocalypse, "I saw a new heaven 
and a new earth, and a pure river of water of life pro- 
ceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb ; 
and on either side, the tree of life whose leaves are 
for the healing of the nations ; and they need no 
candle neither light of the sun, for the Lord God 
giveth them light." For them both, as for all those 
who love His appearing, our Saviour's blessed words, 
as we believe, have been fulfilled — " I go to prepare 
a place for you, that where I am there ye may be 
also." 

A few months previous to the silently approaching 
summons, I was standing with Professor Jackson amid 
a throng of friends who were calling for a few words 
from him. Lifting his hand to request silence, he spoke 
somewhat as follows : "Forme, the time for speech- 
making has passed, the day for reflection has come and 
for looking forward aiid upward. From this present 
life and its absorbing interests, from astronomy and 
the laws of matter, thought turns to the spiritual realm 
whither the aged are hastening. Eeason and Revela- 
tion point from nature to nature's God. In quietness 
and confidence, faith leads the way to the better life. 



70 

Let us then be ever ready to join those whose eman- 
cipated spirits sLine as the brightness of the firma- 
ment and like the stars for ever and ever! " 

Beloved pupils of the graduating class, may these 
scenes and these lives be impressed upon your memo- 
ries. In this age, conspicuous for its admiration of 
wealth and worldly advancement, you will need to em- 
phasize moral qualities, as he emphasized them; to 
believe, as did he, that the straightforward path of 
Christian duty, though the narrow way, is yet the true 
course to honorable success and enduring happiness. 
One of our own poets has said, " Look not mournfully 
into the past; it comes not back again. Wisely improve 
the present ; it is thine. Go forth to meet the shadowy 
future without fear and with a manly heart." Seek 
Christ for guidance, the Spiritfor illumination and have 
faith in the Fatherhood of God. Thus He who " en- 
lighteneth every man who cometh into the world," 
will lead you through this dim vale of discipline to the 
Ian d^of everlasting life and light. 



71 



Almighty God our heavenly Father, give us grace 
that we may cast away the works of darkness and 
put upon us the armor of light; and because through 
the weakness ot our mortal nature we can do no good 
thing without thee, grant us thy grace that in keep- 
ing thy commandments we may please thee both in 
will and deed. May we truly repent us of our sins 
past, and after the good example of those thy ser- 
vants who, having finished their course, do now rest 
from their labors, may we constantly speak the truth, 
boldly rebuke vice and patiently labor and if need be 
suffer, for the truth's sake, through Jesus Christ our 
Lord. Amen. 



72 



NOTE. 

The limits of time necessitated the omission of portions 
of the foregoing Discourses in delivery, and additional 
material has since been acquired. 

Among the influences always cordially recognized by 
Doctor Lewis as affecting his literary career, should have 
been mentioned the sympathy and assistance rendered him 
in his earlier Oriental studies by Doctor Isaac Nordheimer, 
then Professor of Hebrew and German in the University of 
the City of New York and formerly Profesaor of Arabic, 
Syriac and other Oriental Languages in the University of 
Munich. Doctor Nordheimer talked with fluency and ac- 
curacy eleven languages. His Hebrew Grammar, "the 
most elaborate and philosophical in the English tongue," 
was the subject of Reviews by Professor Lewis and several 
other eminent scholars ; as was also his Hebrew Con- 
cordance. 

Professor Wendell Lamoroux, to whom I am herein in- 
debted, will also supervise the printing and publication 
of these Discourses and will add in an Appendix material 
which will tend to complete this memorial tribute. 

E. N. P. 



APPENDIX 



LIST OF THE WORKS 

' oi- 

PROFESSOR TAYLER LEWIS. 



Books. 

Plato a<^<iinst the Atheists; or, The Platonic Theology. Harpers, 

N. Y., 1844. 
Nature and Ground of Punishment. Putnam, N. Y., 1845. 
Six Days of Creation ; or, The Scriptural Cosmology. Van De 

Bogart, Schenectady, 1855. 
The Bible and Science; or. The World Problem. Van de Bogart, 

Sclienectady, 1856. 
The Divine Human in the Scriptures. Carter and Co., K Y., 1860. 
State Rights; a Photograph from the Ruins of Ancient Greece. 

Weed, Parsons and Co., Albany, 1864. 
The Heroic Periods in a Nation's History ; An Appeal to the Soldiers 

of the American Armies. Baker and Godwin, N. Y., 1866. 
Special Introduction to Genesis, with Commentary on chapters 1 to 

11, and 37 to 50, inclusive; in Lauge's Commentary. Scribner 

and Co., N. Y.,1868. 
Rhythmical Version of Ecclesiastcs, with Introduction, Dissertations 

and Annotations; in Lauge's Commentary. Scribner and 

Co.,N. Y.,18;0. 
Rhythmical Version of Job, with Introduction and Annotations ; in 

Lange's Commentary. Scribner, Armstrong and Co., N. Y., 

1874. 
The Light by which we see Light; or, Nature and the Scriptures; 

the Vedder Lectures. Ref. Church Board of Publication, N. Y., 

1875. 
Memoirs of President Nott ; Contributions to, and Revision. Sheldon 

andCo., N. Y.. 1876. 

Addkesses. 
Faith, the Life of Science. Union College Commencement, 1838. 
Natural Religion, the Remains of Primitive Revelation. University 

of Vermont, Commencement, 1839. 
The Believing Spirit. Dartmouth College Commencement, 1841. 
True Idea of the State. Andover Theological Seminary, 1843. 
Nature and Progress of Ideas. Union College, 1849. 



76 

Association discussed ; or, The Socialism of tlie Tribune examined. 

Methodist Quar. Rev., N. Y., Jan., 1848. 
Chalmers. Bib. Repository, April, 1848. 
Bible Ethics. " July, 1848. 

The Revolutionary Spirit. Bib. Rep., Oct., 1848. 
Introductory Notice to Miss Dwight's Mythology. 1849. 
Astronomical Views of the Ancients. Bib. Rep., April and July, 

18i9. 
Spirituality of the Book of Job. Bibliotheca Sacra, Andover, May 

and July, 1849. 
Spirit of the Old Testament. Bib. Rep., Jan., 1850. 
Book of Proverbs. Bib. Rep., April, 1850. 
Names for Soul. " " Oct., 1850. 
Review of Hickok's Rational Psychology. Biblio. Sacra., Jan. and 

April, 1851. 
Trinitarian Letters. New Church Repository, N. Y., May, June, 

1851 and Jan., March, 1852. 
Three Absurdities of Modern Education. Princeton Review, April, 

1851. 
Editor's Table of Harper's Monthly, from Oct., 1851, to Oct., 1854, 

inclusive ; also in 1855 and 1856 ; among which articles, are, in 

1851, Marriage (Nov.), Time and Space, and Geology (Dec.) ; in 

1852, Pulpit and Press (Jan.), Yalue of the Union (Feb.), Immen- 
sity of the Heavens (Mar.), Individuality of the Soul (Ap.), What 
is Education ? (June), Moral Influences of the Stage (Aug.), Who 
is the Statesman ? (Sep.), The Sabbath (Oct.) ; in 1853, Religious 
Liberty, what is it? (May), The School Question (July), What is 
Science? (Oct.), Woman's Rights (Nov.); in 1854, Remedies for 
Political Corruption (Feb.), Political Regeneration (March), 
Sacredness of the Human Body (Ap.), Politics of the Church 
(May), Union Saving (Aug.), Unity of the Race (Sep. and Oct.) ; 
in 1855, Are there more Worlds than one? (Mar.), The Self- 
made Man (Ap.), Conscience (Nov.) ; in 1866, Socra1,es in Prison 
(Ap.). 

Principles or Laws of Translation ; or, The True Mode of teaching 
Latin and Greek. New Brunswick Review, Nov., 1854. 

The Old Family Bible. " " Feb., 1855. 

Review of Hickok's Moral Philosophy. Presbyterian Quarterly, N. 
Y., Dec, 1855. 

Method of teaching Greek and Latin. Barnard's Jour, of Education, 
Hartford ; May and March, 1856. 

Analysis of Sentimentalism. Mercersburg (Pa.), Review, Jan., 1857. 

How Little we know. " " July, 1858. 



77 

Significance of earlier names for Deity and Soul. Young Men's 
Association, Albany, Dec, 1849. 

Conservative Character distinguished from the Radical. Young 
Men's Association, Albany, 1855. 

True Idea of Liberal Education, New York University Convocation , 
1863. 

Memoriter Instruction. " " 1864. 

Knowledge of the Holy Scriptures, an indispensable element of a 
liberal Education. N. Y. Univ. Convocation, 1866. 

The Revolutionary Spirit. Wesle3''an University, 1868. 

Classical Study. N. Y. Univ. Convocation, 1871. 

The Moral and the Secular in Education. JST. Y. Univ. Convoca- 
tion, 1872. 

My old Schoolmaster, " " 1875. 

Articles and Reviews. 

Method of studying the Classics. Lit. and Theol. Review, N. Y. , 

Dec, 1838. 
Great Value of the Classics as a Means of JMental Discipline. Lit. 

and Theol. Review, March, 1839. 
The Comparative Value of Natural and Moral Science. Lit. and 

Theol. Review, Jane, 1839. 
The Orphic Hymns. Iris(N. Y.Univ. Magazine), N. Y., Dec, 1840. 
Study of the Heavens. " " Jan. and March, 1841. 

Review of Nordheimer's Hebrew Grammar. Biblical Repository, 

N. Y., April, 1841. 
The Ancient Metres. Iris, June, 1841. 
Review of Nordheimer's Hebrew Concordance. Bib. Repository, 

April, 1842. 
The Divine Attributes as exhibited in the Grecian Poetry ; Attribute 

of Justice Bib. Rep., July, 1843. 
Review of " Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation." American 

Whig Review, N. Y., May, 1845. 
Cases of Conscience. American Whig Review, July, 1845. 
Human Rights. " " Oct. and Nov., 1845. 

The Church Question. Biblical Repository, Jan., 1846. 
Political Corruption. American Whig Review, May, 1846. 
Has the State a Religion ? " " March, 1846. 

The Sufierings of Christ. Bib. Repository, July, 1846. 
Human Justice ; or. Government, a Moral Power. Bib. Rep., Jan. 

and April, 1847. 
Classical Criticism. Knickerbocker, N. Y., Sept., 1847. 
The Bible, Everything or Nothing. Bib. Rep., Jan., 1848. 



• » - 



78 

The Pearl of Great Price ; or, The Evangelical Creed, a Platonic Idea. 
Lit. & Theo. Review, Feb., 18G0. 

The two Schools of Philosophy. American Theological Review, 
Jan., 18G2. 

Hard Matter. Presb. and Theol. Rev., N. Y., Jan., 1863. 

Emotional Element in Hebrew Translation. Methodist Quar. Re- 
view, N. Y. Four articles in I8G0 and 1864. 

Rcgula Fidei ; or, The Gospel of St. John. Presb. and Theol. Rev., 
N. Y., Jan., 1864. 

Abraham Lincoln. Hours at Home, Scribner and Co., N. Y., June, 
1865. 

The Bible Idea of Truth, as inseparable from the Divine Personality. 
Presb. and Theol. Rev., April, 1866. 

Fables of Pilpay. Putnam's Magazine, K Y., July, 1868. 

Bible Words for Salvation. Presb. and Theol. Review, K Y., Oct., 
1869. 

Nature of Prayer. " !' April, 1870. 

Ancient Oracles ; or. The Primitive Greek Religion. Presb. and 
Theol. Review, Jan. 1871. 

Jowett's Plato. Presb. and Theol. Review, Jan., 1873. 

The One Human Race. Scribner's Monthly, April, 1872. 

Primitive Greek Religion. Presb. and Theol. Review, July, 1873. 

The Purifying Messiah; interpretation of Isaiah, 52:15. 1878. 

Introduction to Farrar's Life of Christ. Wendell, Albany, 1876. 

Critical Notes on the International Sunday-School Lessons on the 
Old Testament. Philadelphia Sunday School Times, Dec, 1876 
to July, 1877. 

Power and Pathos of Euripides. Harper's Monthly, Nov., 1878. 

Many shorter articles; brief Reviews; Discussions in the New York 
Independent, Christian Intelligencer (N. Y.), Christian States- 
man (Phil.), Chicago Advance, Yale Courant and others. 
Posthumous Manuscripts. 

Treatise on the Religious Responsibility of the State. 

Figurative Language of the Bible; or, The Bible Language of the 
Heart. 

Notes (in Arabic, Latin and English) on difficult passages in the 
Koran. 

Notes on 463 difficult passages in the Bible. 

Treatise on the Greek and Latin ]\Ietres. ' 

Syriac Roots of the entire New Testament. 

Scholia Arabica. 

Many other MSS. on Biblical and Classical subjects, written chiefly 
in Hebrew, Greek or Latin. 



ACTION OF THE TRUSTEES OF UNION COLLEGE 



ON THB DECEASE OV 



PROFESSOR TAYLER LEWIS, LL.D., L.H.D. 



The Board of Trustees of Union College have adopted the follow- 
ing record expressive of their sentiments on the occasion of the 
decease of Professor Tayler Lewis. 

Doctor Lewis was a professor in Union College for nearly thirty 
years. Of rare capacity as a logician and of rare acquirements as a 
'linguist, he possessed the most valuable stores of Oriental and Clas- 
sical literature. 

He was an exact and erudite scholar. He was more. He knew 
the songs of Zion as well as the learning of Greece and Rome, and 
drew from all, the philosophy of human life alike of the ancients 
and of his nineteenth century. 

With all his acquirements and capacity, he was a faithful and hum- 
ble Christian whose rule of life was to follow the right wherever it 
seemed to him to lead. Tenacious of purpose, loving the truth 
for the truth's sake, he maintained his convictions in the face 
of all opposition unflinchingly and with ardor but without bit- 
terness. While he hated heresy, he loved the heretic. An illus- 
trious author and voluminous writer, his sole end and aim was that 
right and truth might prevail and that God should be glorified. 
The infirmity of his later years, which lessened his power to influ- 
ence new men drew him within himself but only increased his love 
of learning for its own pure sake. 

What his hand found to do, he did with all his might. 

The influence and example of such a life is precious to all who 
come within its sphere. Even careless youths who failed to appre- 
ciate it when it was enacted before them in College, felt in after life 
its inspiration in their conscience, and with gratitude to him learned 
to admire and imitate its nobleness. 



LIST OF THE WORKS 
or 

PROFESSOR ISAAC W. JACKSON. 



Elements of Conic Sections. Oliver Steele, Albany, 1838. 
Elementary Treatise on Optics. Yan de Bogart, Schenectady, 1853. 
Elements of Trigonometry ; Plane and Spherical. Barhyte, Sche- 
nectady, 1874. 
Elements of Mechanics. Barhyte, Schenectady, 1874. 



ACTION OF THE TRUSTEES OF UNION COLLEGE 



ON THE DECEASE OP 



PROFESSOR ISAAC W. JACKSON, LL.D. 



The Board of Trustees of Union College have adopted the follow- 
ing record, presented by Silas B. Brownell, Esq., on the occasion of 
the decease of Professor Isaac W. Jackson : 

Professor Jackson gave his whole life to Union College. For more 
than fifty years he was one of her successful instructors. A devotee 
of his calling and our College, he was illustrious as an author of 
scientific text-books, and a profound schohir also of the highest 
branches of Pure Mathematics and xhe Physical Sciences. 

Familiarity with abstruse science never deadened his love for hu- 
manity nor cooled his zeal for service to his fellow-men. 

Communion with Nature and research in her secrets never led him 
into doubt or skepticism. " Through faith he understood the worlds 
were framed by the word of God." 

That word of God which said, "Let there be light, and there was 
light," lightened his heart and soul and made his whole life a beau- 
tiful poem of tender charity and stainless purity. 

Both literally and figuratively he dressed and kept the garden into 
which his Lord put him. 

His loving treatment of his youthful pupils endeared him to them 
all ; and late in life when College needed their support, he roused 
their enthusiasm b}'' their affection for him. 

A grateful Alma Mater values his services and celebrates his vir- 
tues while her scattered Alumni cherish his memory and, amid their 
grief and sorrow for their loss, reverently give thanks that such a 
teacher of their youth and friend of their manhood and age was 
so long spared to honor College by his daily life and to adorn the 
State and nation by the light of his example and teaching as it 



82 

shines out in the walk and conversations of the thousand of grateful 
Alumni who shared his instruction and his friendship and now 
mourn his death. 

This was the heritage he craved, the reward he sought — that 
those whom he instructed should follow his example, imbibe his 
spirit and embody his precepts ; that so, when they ceased to be his 
disciples, he might thenceforth call them friends. 

His was thus a successful life. To him beyond most men,was it given 
to reap the harvest of his life's work. On the fiftieth anniversary of 
his connection with College, while men of note in church and State 
delighted to honor him, the boys whom he taught during those fifty 
years came round him once more and thus resolved : 

We, the Alumni of Union College, contemplate with unmixed 
satisfaction the record made during the last half-century by our be- 
loved friend and Professor, Isaac W. Jackson. We take great pleas- 
ure in congratulating him that throughout this long period of service 
he has retained the genuine love and veneration of the Alumni. We 
rejoice that this semi-centennial anniversary of his advent to Pro- 
fessorial work in connection with the College finds his health unim- 
paired, and we trust that many more years of usefulness and 
happiness await him. 

We cherish among the most precious memories of our College 
days the recollection of his warm-hearted encouragement and in- 
terest in our welfare ; and it is our earnest hope that the closing 
labors of his life may be cheered by the consciousness of possessing 
the confidence and love of a vast army of graduates through- 
out the length and breadth of the land. It is therefore 

Resolved, That we greet with profound pleasure this anniversary of 
Professor Jackson's official connection with the College ; and it is our 
hope and prayer that he may be long spared to the institution and 
the world, in the full possession of his eminent faculties of mind and 
his warm impulses of heart. 



FORM OF BEQUEST 



UNION COLLEaE. 



President Potter has, on several occasions, called attention to the 
importance of gifts and bequests to the College, of whatever kind as 
well as amount. 

If the forty or fifty graduates yearly enrolled among our deceased, 
and if other friends of the institution, of Christian unity and of educa- 
tion, each contributed some token of remembrance ; whether a pecun- 
iary endowment; books for our Library ; antiquities, photographs, sin- 
gle works of statuary, painting or engraving, for our Art Collection ; 
every department of Union would soon be enabled to answer the 
highest demands upon its efficiency. 

Every such gift, apart from its intrinsic value, not only affords 
special encouragement to the officers of the institution but by its 
example produces other benefactions perhaps greater than itself 

Already in response to these suggestions of the President, a num- 
ber of bequests'and gifts of interesting objects have been received 
and others are promised. 

The most desirable form of benefaction to the College at the pre- 
sent time is that of contribution to its general resources, untrammeled, 
so far as may be, by Special conditions ; and since, through unac- 
quaintance with legal details, the College may fail of the aid which 
would willingly have been given, its authorities have recommended 
that the proper title of the institution and form of bequest be pub- 
lished, as follows : 

I give and bequeathe to the Trustees of Union College, in the town 
of Schenectady, in the state of New York, the 



i 



